Hey all!  Bundle of holding is featuring the Hillfolk RPG and supplements.  Does anyone have any experience or comments about what this thing is and how it plays?
http://bundleofholding.com/index/current/name/Hillfolk?utm_source=Bundle+of+Holding+subscribers&utm_campaign=f1ca8f515b-092Hillfolk20150224&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_38247a319d-f1ca8f515b-101190109

inb4 move to Other Games.

it was advertised as having "story" elements, but is it considered "not an RPG"?

Quote from: Hillfolk PageWith the Hillfolk roleplaying game, you and your group weave an epic, ongoing saga of high-stakes interpersonal conflict that grows richer with every session. Its DramaSystem rules engine, from acclaimed designer Robin D. Laws, takes the basic structure of interpersonal conflict underlying fiction, movies and television and brings it to the world of roleplaying. This simple framework brings your creativity to the fore and keep a surprising, emotionally compelling narrative constantly on the move.

What do you think?

well that indicates it is advertised for story but nothing ever really indicates they dont just mean that in the sense of any other rpg you would really need to look at the mechanics

hm i am leaning towards storygame plus some of those book themes seem a bit pretentious to me which is something that often goes with storygames but thats not really a fair way to judge it

ok i found this in the 4plebs archive

Hillfolk. Motherfucking Hillfolk. I haven't heard a single mention of this game on /tg/, but damn if it isn't cool as hell. The premise is, essentially, that you are running a game in style of an episodic TV show à la Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. It's fairly rules light, but everything is geared toward establishing a constant state of dramatic tension, of give-and-take between characters, of every resolution leading to a new complication. I cannot wait to run it.

yep storygame

to the other games section we go.

i call shotgun

The SRD free to peruse. I started perusing it, but zoned out after a few pages. Don't know if it's a dreaded storygame or not, but it is clearly not my kind of game.

i can find no such srd

It's an RPG.  It's got a procedural ruleset, it's got random resolution, it's got stats and skills and all that.

OTOH, all of that is basically underneath a system that for Dramatic Scenes which incentivizes taking dramatically appropriate actions that further the plot that are not necessarily in the best interest of your character.  It's specifically meant to mimic cable dramas like The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, etc.

So in a Dramatic Scene, your character may take an action, or forego an action, or give or fail to give an emotional payoff, and the plot gets more complicated.  Nobody can force you to do this -- the token economy pretty explicitly allows you to jump out of such a conflict rather than be coerced.

The rules themselves are okay -- the Drama rules are where it's at, the procedural system is just kind of okay and workmanlike, and I much prefer floating the Drama system on top of another game system.  I ran it once on top of Eclipse Phase, for instance, and it didn't work that well, but that was more my fault than the system's.  I'd really like to use it to do a high-stakes, inside-politics version of Night's Black Agents, where the PCs are part of a CTU-like organization fighting vampires, and all of the soap opera that entails.

The settings that come with the rulebook and the supplement are incredible, though.  I'd really, really like to run a quarter of them, especially the generational conflict between different parts of a Lovecraftian cultist family, of the Dark Shadows-esque soap opera, or what have you.  There's a ton of good ideas in there.  But as I said, I'd use the Drama rules with the rules system of my choice for procedural stuff.

Also, the SRD is, IIRC, written blandly enough that it doesn't really sell the game.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;817539It's specifically meant to mimic cable dramas like The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, etc.

It says 'Iron Age Drama' on the cover... so I'm not getting the Sopranos vibe. Is that from supplemental materials?

It kindasorta sounds like a tool for frustrated script writers.

Quote from: Simlasa;817544It says 'Iron Age Drama' on the cover... so I'm not getting the Sopranos vibe. Is that from supplemental materials?

It kindasorta sounds like a tool for frustrated script writers.

This. Like Fiasco, this is a formalized writer's room exercise suite and not a game. Games don't give a shit about drama. If you're not--at all times--thinking and acting to your man's best advantage, you're not playing the game; you're doing something else and that isn't a proper RPG.

not entirely true you could be under a magical compulsion or something.

Quote from: Simlasa;817544It says 'Iron Age Drama' on the cover... so I'm not getting the Sopranos vibe. Is that from supplemental materials?

It kindasorta sounds like a tool for frustrated script writers.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;817566This. Like Fiasco, this is a formalized writer's room exercise suite and not a game. Games don't give a shit about drama. If you're not--at all times--thinking and acting to your man's best advantage, you're not playing the game; you're doing something else and that isn't a proper RPG.

Yeah, it sounds to me like one of those dramatist thingies, aiming to emulate literary drama. Not sure if quite a full-on storygame but not really an RPG in my book.