TheRPGSite

(Crossposted from Story-Games, because I find it amusing to do so).

The Cog Wars is a confusing title. Nobody knows what a Cog is.

The art is goofy and cartoony, as is much of the writing, which makes for much confusion with the very real and very ugly concepts of racial inequality, indentured servitude, the price of revolution, the placebo nature of media, and so on, which the characters are expected to fight. It's like that moment in Watership Down where you go "Awww, lookit the cute liddle bunny... OH MY GOD!"

The game runs largely around a mission-style method, which may not address your theme, if you like that sort of thing. But, if you like mission-based traditional play, you're still screwed - It uses weird 'hippie' mechanics like stakes and conflict resolution. The conflict resolution is a glorified version of paper-rock-scissors, with five symbols, each of which does something different to your opponent if you win with it. You won't get to use any of your dice collection.

Description, and judgements on it, are largely in the hands of the players. You could get around the city on a rope made of noodles if the other players are willing to let you get away with it. There's no money, no equipment lists. You get five virtue numbers, and three traits, two of which come from a list. And that's all the character mechanics that you get, period, so there's probably not nearly enough crunch to satisy some of you.

I wrote it with loads of help from people; if you try, you can probably find one of them to bitch about.  TonyLB, Robert Earley-Clarke, Dmitri A, and StephenLS all threw in varying amounts of the text. That's a hippie designer, a White Wolf freelancer, and a couple of other folks you likely only know under screen names.  Oh, and a couple of rather gorgeous Biologists who have nothing to do with creating any other RPG are acting as my editors.

You might hate my game. But I love it.

(And, yes, I am laughing like a hyena as I write this. Probably inappropriately, but whatever.  This is kind of celebratory "I'm DONE!!!!" post.)

QuoteReasons Some Of You Might Hate My Game

Sounds like it has the potential to be a decent narrativist story-creation thingamajig, but a very shitty RPG.

What the hell are you guys going to call your new hobby, anyway? Roleplaying is taken and I am damn tired of guessing.

Distressingly close to "hold-hands-and-play-pretend", but so was DitV (and I like DitV.)  If it costs less than a twelve pack of piss-warm 3.2 beer I'll give it a whirl before spamming your PM box with "go bak to teh forge faget."

Congrats on finishing your game.

I read the intro to Cog Wars (that bit that you posted here a week or so ago) and I thought: Cogs are us.  Lower and Middle class workers.

Quote from: fonkaygarryDistressingly close to "hold-hands-and-play-pretend", but so was DitV (and I like DitV.) If it costs less than a twelve pack of piss-warm 3.2 beer I'll give it a whirl before spamming your PM box with "go bak to teh forge faget."

Congrats on finishing your game.

Round about $20 (somewhere between $18 and $22), looks like.  And personally, I glory in the view that RPGs are a slightly more sophisticated version of "let's all play pretend"; to me, that's a good thing.

And, thanks!

Quote from: lostsoulI read the intro to Cog Wars (that bit that you posted here a week or so ago) and I thought: Cogs are us. Lower and Middle class workers.

Mechanical people, who owe the price of their purchase to their owners, and are forced to work it off at punitive rates...

...They make a good 'analog' to a lot of stuff; I'm not going to pick just one, because it's cooler if people can make their own analogy something they can sink their teeth into.

But yeah, that works.

Quote from: YamoSounds like it has the potential to be a decent narrativist story-creation thingamajig, but a very shitty RPG.

Depends on the lighting.  It's chock-full of adventuring, character, and actual playing of roles.  But uses a lot of "Forge-style" mechanics to get there.

So, uh, call it whatever you want.  It falls well inside what I call an RPG, personally, but don't let that stop you.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenDepends on the lighting.  It's chock-full of adventuring, character, and actual playing of roles.  But uses a lot of "Forge-style" mechanics to get there.

So, uh, call it whatever you want.  It falls well inside what I call an RPG, personally, but don't let that stop you.

Don't mind Yamo. He's convinced there's some kind of objective "skill" to playing RPGs, meaning some people are "good" or "not good" at playing them. Good of course is defined by having high-level D&D characters, since there's no way to cheat at that if you're a bad player and no way to get screwed over if you're a good player. :rolleyes:

I'm intrigued by the idea that different "throws" have different impacts on your opponent, though. I'm filing that concept in with things like Dogs' "any conflict can leave mechanical impact" and Heroquest's "anything interesting about a character can have mechanical weight" in my fairly short list of RPG theory tidbits that I believe have universal value.

Quote from: Christmas ApeDon't mind Yamo. He's convinced there's some kind of objective "skill" to playing RPGs, meaning some people are "good" or "not good" at playing them.

This is true of any game, by definition. Dispute that coherently, if you can.

If not, shut the fuck up.

Damn, that was harsh.

Sorry.

Quote from: Christmas ApeDon't mind Yamo. He's convinced there's some kind of objective "skill" to playing RPGs, meaning some people are "good" or "not good" at playing them..

I totally believe this.

I'll point to the number of people with high-level D&D characters who are actively engaged in squeezing giant steaming loaves onto the lawn of our hobby.
Or the fact you can just start a character at high level; does the fact the DM has a 10th level fighter as guard captain make him "better" at D&D than the players?
Or the numerous definitions of "game" which have absolutely nothing to do with skill.
Or that the only real skill a player can put into the game as a whole is dependant on knowing how the rules of the game work, rather than any specific personal ability besides memory.
Etc.

I believe you can bring personal skills to the RPG table that will enhance the play experience for everyone; being good at basic math and understanding probability, having a decent memory, understanding that everyone's there to have fun, some minor acting skill, and the like. I don't think this inherently means that one person can be "better" at RPGs than another, and frankly, all the people I've ever met who claimed to be "awesome players" were the most socially inept, self-deluded, bullying, demanding, unpleasant armchair experts I've had the displeasure of having walk through my door. Maybe this gives me a bias, but the only skills I need to see are a willingness to learn the game and a desire to share in the Awesome.

And frankly, be as harsh as you'd like. I find that the virtue of this place; everybody takes the gloves off and gets honest. It's not like I'm offended by what some geek on the internet tells me, nor should you be.

Whether you have a high level character or can start a character at a high level means nothing. Nor do I think that "people with high level characters" are hurting the hobby at all.

What does hurt the hobby is when people within the hobby actively make it look bad either through incompetence (as in the case of the socially unacceptable stinky geek who makes everyone look bad) or through design (as in the case of the self-hating indie who thinks that by accusing gamers of being brain-damaged he'll make himself or pals look good). There's very little difference betwen those two guys and they do make roleplaying a lot less cool. The hobby would be far better if such people were not part of it.

But I do believe that you can actually be good at RPGs. Or certain RPGs, anyhow.  

"Or that the only real skill a player canput into the game as a whole is dependant on knowing how the rules of the game work, rather than any specific personal ability besides memory."

Not true at all. Knowing the rules is important, but knowing how to use the rules of a given RPG and transform your knowledge into desired outcomes is a definite skill. This doesn't apply to all games I suppose, but it does apply.

QuoteYou won't get to use any of your dice collection.

Poo.  I've tried diceless RPGs, but without the tactile sensation of cool plastic polyhedrals and the anxiety of random chance the experience seems... incomplete.

Cog Wars might be the only RPG that was sent to me for Review that I might have to surrender on.

I just can't make freaking heads or tails on the damn thing. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. I can't figure whether its supposed to be serious or silly or a combination; I can't get the fucking point of the utterly abstract game mechanic, I don't get what you're supposed to DO in the damn thing, and I have serious trouble with the structure of the whole PDF.

How the hell does one of the few "Theory guys" who's most able to talk about Theory without de-evolving into total gibbersh forgespeak manage to create a game that seems so, well, gibberish-y to me?

The copy you sent me was a "preview version".. maybe the full version is more coherent?

If not, I'm afraid I might have to give up on it altogether, dude.  I've read honest-to-god medieval fucking Arab Alchemical Grimoires that made more sense than this.
You know, Al-Geber, from whom we get the word "gibberish"? Read and lose 1D10 sanity? John Dee? I've slogged through them all.
But I can't even begin to understand yours.

RPGPundit

If it broke Pundit's brain, it's worth having on my shelf.

You got yourself a customer, Levi.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe copy you sent me was a "preview version".. maybe the full version is more coherent?

The flowchart thing went *poof*.  As in, was completely removed, to make room for a simple "here's a standard adventure structure, warp it as you will".

The highly abstract mechanic is still there, though it gets something like twenty pages of "how this works and how to use it" in the full version.

I'll be sending you a full version to take a run at shortly.  There were a lot of changes, yes.

--

And for Yamo's statement on "requiring skill", hell yes.  Plainly, I'd say that The Cog Wars actually demands that the users develop skills that many GMs simply don't have:

Most GMs set 'the stakes' for a given roll based almost completely out of book suggestions, and are likely to be totally awkward the first time they have to make up something like:

"So - revenge time.  The Mastermind is trying to screw up your reputation, by means of a whispering campaign against you.  This is a Civics challenge, and the Stakes are: If you win, you gain XP equal to your unused tokens.  If you lose, your Campaign traits are shut down for the rest of the mission, and you have a one-token penalty on all Civics and Rapport challenges for the rest of the mission.  We'll call a draw a loss."

The Cog Wars expects the GM to be able to just make that kind of shit up on the spot, once they know the system.  It gives a couple pages of advice on how to do it, but while I took away a little of what the GM can do in one or two places, I mainly did so to make room for all the other shit I piled on to them.

Quote from: Abyssal MawBut I do believe that you can actually be good at RPGs. Or certain RPGs, anyhow.

Okay, this totally deserves a thread to itself.  I'll start it.

Hey Levi,
No idea if I'll like the game or not yet, but congrats on finishing it either way.

Now you can start making a Grim Fandango rpg...

Quote from: BalbinusNow you can start making a Grim Fandango rpg...

Not quite yet.

I have two esisting projects standing in the wings, first - a post-apocalypse survival game, and an 1830s game about magic and superstition.

The post-apocalypse game (The Pulse) comes first.

How do I preview it?
(as in, Levi, is it possible for me to preview your game?)

What kind of game is it? Like, made for one shots or something?
I know I could totally use a game for one-shots...

Ok, well I look forward to trying the whole thing over again with a newer copy.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Levi KornelsenThe flowchart thing went *poof*.

I'd never have described the mission control sheet as incoherent, though. If anything, as written it might have locked every scenario into a fairly tight structure, although I can see how that wouldn't have suited everyone's tastes.

(Personally, at least during the first few games the greatest difficulty for me would have probably been keeping the effects of the Virtues on each other straight: remembering which one blocks what, and such.)

Quote from: Levi KornelsenThe post-apocalypse game (The Pulse) comes first.

Damn skippy and about time.
-Zam