I'm mildly interested in Reign. However, it's hard to get a real sense of how it plays from all the fanboys on RPGNet who adore the latest hip thing.

So is anybody here actually playing Reign? Can it be taught verbally, or do players have to take the book home? I doubt I'd run it with the default setting, so I'm curious about how portable it is to other fantasy settings. How about historical settings? How about one-on-one play?

I've had the game for about a month now, and I'm fixing to start up a quick adventure shortly (though not in the published setting -- I'm trying vikings in Markland/Vinland).  I'll try to keep people abreast of how it works.

System-wise, it's not terribly different from NEMESIS, which I've always found easy to convey in simple verbal terms.  Creating characters is probably one of the more complex parts of teaching or learning the game, but in Reign even that is simplified with the one roll chargen (which I find oddly reminiscent of classic Traveller).

!i!

Ian, I've seen a few folks suggest Reign "perfects" or "improves" the One-Roll Engine.  Would you (or anyone else here) agree with this, and if so, in what way?

I'll meet you midway between "perfects" and "improves" by saying that Reign has refined the ORE to the point where it runs more smoothely, with less of the probabilistic wonkiness.  The main refinements are as follows:

• Stats and skills are each limited to 5 dice each, meaning that dice pools just plain don't exceed 10 dice.

(There is, of course, an exception to this, in that both stats and skills can be raised to 6 through experience, but this is difficult and expensive.)

• Hard dice, which always have a value of 10 and are not rolled, have been eliminated.
• Expert dice, which let the player set the value of the die before rolling, are limited to only one per pool.
• Master dice, which let the player set the value of the die after rolling, are similarly limited to only one per pool.  Furthermore, master dice are exclusive of expert dice -- if you upgrade a skill to a master die, you lose your expert die.

The over all effect is a less gimmicky, less over-the-top rolling of dice.  The basic statistics of rolling for matches remains the same, but it's less skewed by crazy dice options.

Reign also does a neat job of providing standard combat maneuver options, and special martial combat paths (think of Feng Shui's fu paths or Exalted's charm paths, but not all crazy and supernatural).  It's added some well-balanced crunch while toning down the dice gimmick.

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaThe over all effect is a less gimmicky, less over-the-top rolling of dice.  The basic statistics of rolling for matches remains the same, but it's less skewed by crazy dice options.

!i!

*le sigh* thanks for sharing, sounds like failure will STILL be far to common. (I'd hoped they'd resolved it, but I give up.) I don't find failure gritty, I find it mostly comedic. Success for a price is gritty.

Ah well.
Some games are just not for me.

Quote from: Silverlion*le sigh* thanks for sharing, sounds like failure will STILL be far to common. (I'd hoped they'd resolved it, but I give up.)

As I recall, that was the big gripe in Godlike, yeah?  Joe Troop couldn't aim his M-1 without pissing all over himself and screwing it all up a bit too often, yes?

Quote from: Silverlion*le sigh* thanks for sharing, sounds like failure will STILL be far to common. (I'd hoped they'd resolved it, but I give up.)

In general I find the ORE mechanics work for me, so I'm really not sure what you expect from it to suit your tastes.  I personally haven't found failure to be a disproportionately difficult matter -- your average Joe's die pool will be between 4 and 6 dice, which gives him odds from 50% to 85%, respectively, for a bare minimum, single-match success (rolling 4d10 just now gave me 13 matches out of 20 rolls).  The GM's advice also goes on at some length to suggest what kinds of rolls to ask for and when to ask for them, with detailed tips on how to skew the probabilities to match different situational difficulties.

Of course, this thread is a request for first-hand experiences, so we probably shouldn't argue the merits or flaws of Reign until either one of us has had a chance to put it into actual play.

!i!

Quote from: Zachary The FirstAs I recall, that was the big gripe in Godlike, yeah?  Joe Troop couldn't aim his M-1 without pissing all over himself and screwing it all up a bit too often, yes?

Yes, a soldier with a 4d pool will fail half the time, which iirc is a little better than the real life statistical average for firefights. If he takes advantage of the aim action then his chances of hitting will improve significantly over a couple of rounds. If he's part of a large unit of unworthies then they're virtually guaranteed at least one hit per round. It's also worth noting that starting characters are likely to have dice pools well in excess of 4d.

As has been said, one of the tricks to understanding Reign is knowing when to roll. In most cases simply possessing a skill is enough to succeed at a standard task. If the pressure is on (ie. taking someone out in the chaos of a mass melee) then a single match is often enough, unless of course the target is actively defending.

I'll also clarify the above by saying that I've yet to sit down and play the game, but have run numerous test combats with a friend since purchase. It's fast and smooth, and permits tactical decision making both before and after the dice have landed, which is something I've never come across before. I'm looking forward to starting a mini-campaign in the next month or so.

Quote from: Zachary The FirstAs I recall, that was the big gripe in Godlike, yeah?  Joe Troop couldn't aim his M-1 without pissing all over himself and screwing it all up a bit too often, yes?

Pretty much. This becomes comedic, not gritty. As for the "don't roll dice so much", well *shrugs*, I don't roll dice for most games UNLESS there is opposition, or some reason to make a test dramatically rather than just let the PC succeed and move on, and I still find the mechanics deeply problematic for that.

How often does say Conan "miss" with his sword? Even in a serious and challenging contest?

Ian: Please relate ACTUAL play experience when you do run it. I'd like to see what you think when you've actually put them in play, rather than testing them out of "actual" real implementation.

The system is a pretty straightforward and classical one. You have skills, gear, magic, a gamemaster with infinite power and all that traditional jazz.
The system does not use levels, but uses an experience system. It features a couple of different fighting styles and esotheric disciplines (basically feats for the different skills).
It is a bit on the gritty side, which means, swordhits hurt and tackling someone out of your league is going to really hurt.
Contrary to what people in this thread have said, failure is not that constant, your average starting character will have 7+ dice in his areas of expertise and probably an expert or a master dice on top of that which means failure occurs in the single digit % area... with a master die you can't really fail at simple tasks.

The system is not really married to the setting, the author even gives advice on how to port it to other settings and how you should tweak the rules for that (I think wuxia is one of the examples he uses).

I ran the game on conventions recently... teaching the rules with a combat example usually takes about 20-30 minutes depending on the experience of those you teach the system to. I think you really only need one book per group as you will not look into it a lot anyway.

Hope that helped.

Disclaimer: I like reign a lot, but it is not the game I am playing right now... so there are other games I like more ^^

Quote from: SilverlionHow often does say Conan "miss" with his sword? Even in a serious and challenging contest?

If he has 9d + 1 master die in sword (which isn't too far fetched for a character of Conan's stature) he'll only "miss" if someone of comparable skill is parrying or dodging and gets a result at least as high and wide as his attack set(s). And that's not taking into account any martial paths Conan has picked up along the way.

In Reign as written he'll cut through unworthy opponents like a scythe.

Quote from: SaphimThe system is not really married to the setting, the author even gives advice on how to port it to other settings and how you should tweak the rules for that (I think wuxia is one of the examples he uses).

I ran the game on conventions recently... teaching the rules with a combat example usually takes about 20-30 minutes depending on the experience of those you teach the system to. I think you really only need one book per group as you will not look into it a lot anyway.

Hope that helped.

Very much. Thanks.

It sounds like something I could use to run a fantasy setting I've been wanting to play for a while now (Thamber, from Jack Vance's 'The Killing Machine'). It also sounds as though it would work with a group where not everyone can show up for every session. And I like the fact that you can keep combat simple, or add in tactics and complexity if a particular player wants to.

My experiences are more-or-less in line with Ian's and Saphim's. I'll add that the NEMESIS rules - free and online - are quite useful for teaching the One Roll Engine to new players, if you have a few minutes to trim them down heavily and take out/change the bits which are different in REIGN - but even if you don't have time to do that, it's fairly easy to run. My campaign has been running for 2-3 months now, and none of the players had their own copies of the rules until last week.

Also, the statistical wonkiness really, really really isn't an issue in REIGN, though I can see how it could have been in earlier versions of the system. The most important thing to realise is that player characters can now buy Master Dice at character generation, regardless of who they are, whereas in previous iterations of the system Master Dice represented supernatural capabilities. Essentially, having a Master Dice in a pool means that so long as you don't have any penalties to your roll, you'll always be able to get a set, so if you don't want to fail at a particular skill, all you need to do is buy a Master Dice in it and you'll succeed every time so long as you aren't trying to do something complicated (like fighting whilst tightrope-walking or something). It's trivially easy to make characters who are competent in their areas of expertise in REIGN, even at the lowest band of character creation.

EDIT TO ADD: The character generation rules in REIGN, incidentally, have a number of simple tips on how to create an effective character, which is a refreshing change of pace from systems which equate character optimisation with munchkinism. (Or like the idea of character optimisation, but make it crazy-difficult.) Stolze goes the extra mile to help you design the character you want to play, and that's neat.