So, did anyone actually like this game? Anyone come to like it over time? Still like it now.
RPGPundit
It's one of my favorites. I own two sets.
Seanchai
I remember the buzz when it came out, but I never got to play it and I don't think I know anyone who did either. But aren't we dangerously close to dreaded story gaming here...
I bought it used at a convention a couple of years ago and ran a one shot. It's fine. I'm sure that my players would have played it again, but at the time we were only playing each game once to try and get some use out of the tons of games sitting unused on the shelf. I vaguely recall most of the book being a disappointment, but I don't remember why. I asked my wife to maybe run a game sometime (any game) and she mentioned Everway and GURPS as two she might like to GM.
It's fun. I found some consensus with some players who wanted to run something a little more myth-like (not mythic, exactly) than typical fantasy. More Gilgamesh than Conan. We had a good time. I haven't played it for years, but I still would.
I read some Campbell and put it in the back of my mind. I read some Huck Finn and Davy Crockett and put it in the back of my mind. Then I drew a long, winding Allfather of Rivers map. The cards and the players did most of the work for me. I just had to manage the tone and the texture. It put out a lot more than I put in, I think.
In fact, I probably have a good group for a one- or three-shot on it.
Good reminder.
It was something I always wanted to try but for whatever reason I never bought it and neither did anyone else I know.
I have it; I'd love to run it. It's actually a strong-GM game, even in character creation (in which the player gets to interpret a set of "Vision cards" as the character's back story) at least as far as interpreting the precise effects of in-game abilities and costing them out goes. In play, it's even more strongly GM-centric, with the GM essentially picking how he wants to resolve things (straight up comparison of attributes, choosing what "feels right", or drawing a card and drawing inspiration from that). Apparently this is the original need-the-designer-in-the-box-to-play game, though.
Was there just the one big box or did it have a bunch of supplementary add-ons?
I've seen some of the cards and it kind of reminded me of Tarot cards... which I've used at times to generate random events in-game (look at the image and see what comes to mind).
There were booster packs of cards. And at least one supplement called Spherewalker or something like that.I should google that, but I'm tired. I never tried hard to get all the cards, but I have a whole bunch, and they're pretty nifty as such things go. There was a central, non-expending 36 card Tarot-like deck in the big box to resolve things. It wasn't hard to get the hang of.
Liked it; have played it (at an Ambercon, as it happens); still like it.
Just to clarify, I liked it too, though I thought it could bear some significant improvement. In its original format it was like the 90s new-agey politically-correct version of Amber. So much so that copies were actually sold in new age bookstores.
I would love to see a more badass Everway without all the stupidity.
RPGPundit
Quote from: stu2000;426229There were booster packs of cards. And at least one supplement called Spherewalker or something like that.
There were a few adventures as well. I think I have two of them in print and one that came on a disk...
Seanchai
Everyway was a strange, unconventional product in so many ways.
I admire it for finding a good way to tie in to collectible cards, for coming up with a rules lite / indie style game without becoming really pretentious, for using a box set format and trying to reach out to a new customer base (even if it didn't necessarily work), and for having lavish production values.
All that said, the game itself kind of underwhelmed me. It's just not my style of game. I bought it, ran a game of it, and decided I just didn't like it enough to keep (it either got tossed years ago or is still sitting in storage in the basement of my old dorm in a chest of old rpg stuff I decided wasn't worth trying to move back in '98).
This is a bit rambly, but...
I had it, liked it, and ran it for about a year. I found that non-gamers responded well to it, like my ex-GF.
It was great for characters that had one or two cool things that they could do, like the fire-priest example character, but I could never get true wizardry-styled magic to work right. It felt too arbitrary.
The rating system from 1-10 gave decent examples, but it really felt like just making crap up to me. There was no spine to that part of the system.
I loved the drama deck and used it as the primary resolution mechanic, with Karma informing the decisions.
With a better magic system and a bit more rules work, it would have been incredible. Overall, it was probably a bit too light for me.
The setting material wasn't my cup of tea either. It tried to be resonant on a symbolic level, but it felt more like randomness. An undead that turned into a dragon? Every world has the same celestial bodies as we do? Meh. I can see them having the same "Forces" like "WAR" "LOVE", etc, but to think that the moon has the same caters as ours, or the same constellations on every world, it's bit much. I guess the worlds were meant to be fantastic parallel Earths or something, but it didn't land for me.
On the other hand I loved that the drama deck represented the forces across the worlds and the idea of a Usurper to replace a card. I guess I'm more into a self-consistent fictional cosmology than hacking off the limbs of real world mysticism and shoving them into a game.
Despite all the negative stuff above, I have fond memories of the game. If I hadn't lost the cards I'd probably still have and play it, and maybe modify it as per the stuff I've mentioned.
I'm not sure how I'd change the cards system; I think the drama deck should be replaced by Tarot (there's so many tarot decks out there its not even funny, and it would be a more straightforward way to handle the game, a little less interpretive), and the cards used in character creation... well, I don't know there. Something a bit less new-age themed.
RPGPundit
Quote from: jgants;426442I admire it for finding a good way to tie in to collectible cards, for coming up with a rules lite / indie style game without becoming really pretentious, for using a box set format and trying to reach out to a new customer base (even if it didn't necessarily work), and for having lavish production values.
All that said, the game itself kind of underwhelmed me.
Same here. I had very high hopes to see what the masterminds behind the MTG success would come up with.
But it was quite a bit pretentious. The box size alone was a statement - and not a very clever one as game stores hated that game for two reasons: that thing was so huge that it didn't fit most store fixtures, and that they had to order it to get their allocation of ... which MTG expansion was it?
Fallen Empires?Quote from: RPGPundit;426588, and the cards used in character creation... well, I don't know there. Something a bit less new-age themed.
That was my major gripe with the system. The cards were so
specific in their flowery weirdness that it was impossible to use the game in a traditional Greyhawk-Forgotten-Realms-style setting.
And they weren't that suited to bring out the imagination of the players either. Most groups I saw interpreted the iamges literally, with almost every group having one tiger-man character.
Just a note; my group never used the vision cards for character generation. I might have pulled one or two out for plot inspiration, but that was it. Those cards were mostly a miss for me.
I don't think replacing a deck of custom made cards with a Tarot deck is going to make a game less "new agey"....
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;426628But it was quite a bit pretentious.
Well, OK, it was pretentious on the level of White Wolf. But everyone was trying to be White Wolf-like pretentious in those days.
I was just saying it wasn't on the level of being Forge-like pretentious (Braugh, Wick, Crane, Baker, Edwards, etc).
A correction; actually it was called the fortune deck, not drama deck as I mistakenly said above.
I bought a copy but never got "into" it much so it mostly collects dust on my shelf. I had heard that it had elements similar to ADRP, and this intrigued me a lot, but it had a totally different feel.
Same with Nobilis and most other games advertised as ADRP-like.
Everway was flakier than Amber, but it was still FAR more amber-esque than Nobilis, which basically tried to use Amber's fame and success to leech off customers.
RPGPundit
Just bought the base set and a set of the 90 fortune cards off ebay, hopefully i'll be able to get some use out of the game as a sort of intro to roleplaying or something.
Quote from: Broken-Serenity;448860Just bought the base set and a set of the 90 fortune cards off ebay, hopefully i'll be able to get some use out of the game as a sort of intro to roleplaying or something.
Good luck with this! You could probably do far worse than Everway as an "intro to roleplaying".
RPGPundit
I own it but I've only read it. I doubt I'd ever play it although the basic system makes sense.
What strongly doesn't click for me is the idea that you've got a diverse set of PCs with deep backgrounds inspired by the vision cards (the example character seemed pretty emo to me)...and then the core concept of gameplay is "inderdimensional troubleshooters".
I think they'd do better if they picked several genres, tweaked the character generation system for each one, and published a custom deck for each as well.
Quote from: Elliot Wilen;449145I own it but I've only read it. I doubt I'd ever play it although the basic system makes sense.
What strongly doesn't click for me is the idea that you've got a diverse set of PCs with deep backgrounds inspired by the vision cards (the example character seemed pretty emo to me)...and then the core concept of gameplay is "inderdimensional troubleshooters".
I think they'd do better if they picked several genres, tweaked the character generation system for each one, and published a custom deck for each as well.
Yes, in retrospect that would have been better.
RPGPundit