I was curious what folks think of this game. Sounds like a fun beer and pretzels type casual one-off game to me. I'd like to give it a try.
(http://www.wunderland.com/WhatsNewPics/2010/action_castle.jpg)
QuoteOver the holidays I had my first experience with Action Castle -- and more importantly, its underlying game system, called Parsely. I'm incredibly excited about this. Very rarely do new game concepts come along which impress me, but this one stands out as being something truly revolutionary. And yet, like many of the most brilliant ideas, it's so fiendishly simply that you say "why hasn't anybody thought of this before?"
Action Castle was published last year by Memento Mori Theatricks in the modest form of an oversized, folded, laminated card. I first discovered it by reading the OgreCave.com Stocking Stuffer idea list last December. I was so intrigued that I put it on my Xmas list, and was delighted to receive it. (Thanks Jean!) Alison ran us through the Action Castle module the following Thursday, and it was such a hoot that several of us left the session intending to create our own scenarios for the system.
The Parsely engine, created by Jared A. Sorensen, is really quite simple: it's a way of playing an 80's style text adventure game without a computer, or rather, with a human pretending to be a computer. Instead of typing "GO NORTH" or whatever, you simply speak your commands, and the "computer" tells you what happens. A Parsely session is a lot like every other RPG (Role Playing Game) system except that the Dungeon Master is an android who only understands a limited number of commands and instructions.
Parsely is a cross between two great game systems that work together, like hot fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream, to create something that's even better than either component alone. (Most writers probably would have gone with the peanut butter & chocolate analogy, but that one seems overused to me.)
Parsely games are better than old-school text adventures in lots of ways. Firstly, it changes a solitary activity into a group event, transforming something that isolates people into something that brings them together. Secondly, it's just a lot more fun telling your commands to a friend rather than typing them into a computer. (Yes, even when that friend is deliberately slowing you down with "syntax errors.") Thirdly, human-ware is more sensitive to the player's needs than hardware, and thus can react to player frustration with hints. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, it's vastly easier to create a Parsely scenario than to program a full-scale text adventure game.
Parsely games are also more appealing, at least to me, than any other RPG system I've tried. In the first place, text adventures are all about puzzle-solving, whereas games like D&D often devolve into elaborate battles with imaginary monsters (which I find terribly dull). It's vastly easier to run a Parsely game than to become the Gamemaster in any other RPG, since a well-debugged Parsely "program" will have everything you need all figured out in advance. A standard Gamemaster has to be able to handle it when the players say "Let's do this totally different thing" and go running off in a direction you hadn't planned for (and are possibly unable to cope with). In a Parsely game, the computer can easily shut down any "fast ones" the player is trying to pull by saying "You can't do that," or "There's nothing special about that," or "I don't understand that, try again."
All of these factors combine to make Parsely a role-playing system that I finally want to create modules for. In fact, I've already done so. I dusted off the ideas from some of my earliest game design creations, i.e. a couple of text adventure games I created when I was in High School, and I've blended them into a really fun Parsely game I call Muffins. I've run increasingly complete versions of Muffins several times now for different groups of my friends, and I'm simply delighted with the fun it delivers.
Here's the publisher's website, where you can get Action Castle, and a second scenario, Jungle Adventure.
http://memento-mori.com/online-store/action-castle/
Here is a demo of it being player...or I should say here is Gabe from Penny Arcade trying to play it, and failing...at PAX east coast.
YouTube- The "Action Castle" Incident at PAX East 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo8R4s0AY4o)
...I'd give myself fifteen minutes, max, before boredom or frustration kills the fun.
Oh, nice, a no-trick-pony that suffocates to death on its on puke!
People are buying this, actually? No way, this is an April Fool's Day joke, you gotta be kidding us...
Same weird indie thing, different day.
Color me totally uninterested.
Sounds weird and kind of neat. It could be fun. I'd give it a shot.
Quote from: Silverlion;375504Same weird indie thing, different day.
What game do you think it resembles?
Sounds kinda interesting... kinda.
I loved those old text adventures... we had some at a lab I worked in and we'd all work together trying to find our way through them. Some of the puzzles were pretty wild.
The one I particularly remember was Trinity... which had all this stuff about the history of nuclear warfare. It had one area that involved a giant Klein Bottle that reversed the layout of everything...
If Action Castle plays out anything like our lab group stumbling through those old games then I can see how it could be lots of fun.
They get props for the clever logo. I suspect the game would only be fun near the start (barring abusable substances). It's funny for the GM to say "Syntax error" the first dozen times, but wouldn't the joke get old? In the end wouldn't it suffer the same infuriating frustration to complete? I could be off the mark, as I haven't read the rules. Just initial thoughts. Did I mention I liked the logo?
(http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Images/zork3l.jpg)
Great though they were these text adventures were good because that's all there was to play. I'd imagine playing these games old school style with old school rules will remind us that nostalgia aint what it used to be.
This will be fun for a one niter, but that's all.
One other point, how would running this game be any different from a lazy GM turning up with a Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own-adventure book for the evening?
So...
Wait...
The selling point is telling the players that they can't do something, because its not hard-coded into the system?
Yeah, I'll pass not only because that sounds lame, but everyone I have ever gamed with, from my best friends to my six year old son, would call B.S. on that.
Quote from: Mistwell;375467I was curious what folks think of this game. Sounds like a fun beer and pretzels type casual one-off game to me. I'd like to give it a try.
I've been curious about it but I don't get it. I wanna see a real play report, or a sample of play, or something.
Man fuck a text adventure. All text adventures are is you sitting there across from some ex-MIT grad student fatbeard playing "Guess what I'm thinking" and yelling WROOOOOOOOOONG! in your face at every misstep.
Tell you what, when I can fire up Zork, type "go out into the woods and use that magic sword to cut some branches and make some torches, then look around on the ground for a couple of rocks to use as flint and tinder so I don't get eaten by a 'grue' ", I'll consider playing them again.
Quote from: Lawbag;375683One other point, how would running this game be any different from a lazy GM turning up with a Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own-adventure book for the evening?
I'm guessing that the options could be more elaborate than they are in an FF book.
I don't really see this as an RPG or something to be played often... but as a kind of party puzzle game... lots of cocktails and fondue... shag carpeting and folks in bell-bottom pants... and one guy pretending to be a crappy old computer.
I guess I'm nuts but it sounds high-larious to me.
This almost sounds like one of Sorensen's "April Fools games," but that wasn't the one for this year (http://memento-mori.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/gagaworld.jpg).
For as much as I really like InSpectres, a lot of his other stuff really leaves me cold. Most of 'em, now that I think about it.
Quote from: Mistwell;375541What game do you think it resembles?
Yet another game who wants to hamstring the GM role. Basically. Admittedly this also hampers players. Just not fond of Jared's games. I played early InSpectres games ages ago. Yet he continued to move into "I hate gamers" at that time. (I know he meant what this site calls fatbeards, but still. No reason to be an ass.)
Quote from: Lawbag;375681This will be fun for a one niter, but that's all.
You mean like every other Forge game?
huh, my buddy already does this same thing (http://bradshaytextadventure.blogspot.com/) via chat routinely. I could see this being 30 minutes of entertainment with more beer, less pretzels. might end with 10 GOTO PUNCHFACE though. ;)
10 PUNCHFACE
20 GOTO 10
Gotta do these things properly!
10 print "i saw this at gen con last year. Seemed like fun, but i didn't get to try it"
I bought it when I ordered my copy of Lacuna and played it last time my group got together. Everyone had fun. Sure it's only a one-shot, but it was a hoot.
Hell, I was gonna pick it up, but it's not available. :/
He needs to bundle both in a 3.5" diskette-sleeve (sliced open diskette-as-sleeve with a Parsley sticker) and I'd buy them both. :D
Another example of play:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_4MUDMJKus
What a load of bullshit.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;376756What a load of bullshit.
RPGPundit
Yep.
threadcrapping troll.
Quote from: two_fishes;376776threadcrapping troll.
Hardly, given that this game isn't even an RPG. And on that note, I'll be moving this to some other forum.
RPGPundit
Play OD&D, make up your own puzzles, challenge the player's wits, not the character's stats.
There. Done. And this is still a RPG.
An Android GM who understands a limited amounts of "commands"? WTF?
I, uh, don't see anyone claiming it's an RPG. *checks the site* Nope, Jared doesn't say it's an RPG, Mistwell didn't say it was an RPG. He did start the thread in the wrong forum.
Fucking thing makes a lousy cup of coffee, too.
Quote from: Thanlis;376839I, uh, don't see anyone claiming it's an RPG. *checks the site* Nope, Jared doesn't say it's an RPG, Mistwell didn't say it was an RPG. He did start the thread in the wrong forum.
Fucking thing makes a lousy cup of coffee, too.
Excuse me?
QuoteParsely games are also more appealing, at least to me, than any other RPG system I've tried. In the first place, text adventures are all about puzzle-solving, whereas games like D&D often devolve into elaborate battles with imaginary monsters (which I find terribly dull). It's vastly easier to run a Parsely game than to become the Gamemaster in any other RPG, since a well-debugged Parsely "program" will have everything you need all figured out in advance. A standard Gamemaster has to be able to handle it when the players say "Let's do this totally different thing" and go running off in a direction you hadn't planned for (and are possibly unable to cope with). In a Parsely game, the computer can easily shut down any "fast ones" the player is trying to pull by saying "You can't do that," or "There's nothing special about that," or "I don't understand that, try again."
All of these factors combine to make Parsely a role-playing system that I finally want to create modules for. In fact, I've already done so. I dusted off the ideas from some of my earliest game design creations, i.e. a couple of text adventure games I created when I was in High School, and I've blended them into a really fun Parsely game I call Muffins. I've run increasingly complete versions of Muffins several times now for different groups of my friends, and I'm simply delighted with the fun it delivers.
From the quote in the OP. The dude is DEFINITELY saying this is a role playing game. Try again.
Quote from: Benoist;376841From the quote in the OP. The dude is DEFINITELY saying this is a role playing game. Try again.
Uh, that's a reviewer. You can be as pissed off as you want at him for getting it wrong, but he's not here to read or comment and it's not really relevant to the game. When a reviewer makes a factual error about a game he or she is reviewing, it's important to be able to recognize the error. Judging anything based on erroneous claims made by third parties is... problematic.