It was great to re-explore Vimary, the ruined city and home to tribal humanity in the post-apocalypse roleplaying game Tribe 8. The impetus to return came from the Quickstart of the new version of the game, powered by John Harper’s Forged in the Dark (FitD). I offered the game at our Revelation convention, which we managed to run face to face at our usual local venue. Light narrative RPGs are part of my broad and eclectic library of systems, but as per my previous post, I was having some difficulties with elements of the FitD engine.
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| Well, I certainly seem to be enjoying it… |
The game looked quite fiddly. Action Rolls in the game follow the principle that they need to be meaningful and will have consequences of some form once the dice are interpreted. The Position (Risk) and Effect (Outcome) requires some GM setup to provde the context of each action roll, and the result has a layer of interpretation on it too. The largely narrative context for both the Position and Effect of each roll was also a bit of a turn off. Still, I could see that, even with some Progress clocks slapped into a scene, the outcome of action was going to be a lot quicker than weightier trad systems, including its Tribe 8 predecessor in the Silhouette system.
At Revelation convention, I spent the first session enjoying the gaming burble and absorbing FitD. In reality I had spent the previous week really diving in and rehearsing how I would apply the game. In FitD’s own terms, getting to grips with the system was Risky and Standard in terms of Position and Effect, with a four slice Progress Clock called ‘FitD Bollocks’. I might have made it six or eight slices to reflect the difficulty, but that is all hand wavy whim, right? For this Blog story it’s a four slicer, giving an acknowledgement of some comlexity, but not turning it into too much of a long term project. I looked at my internal character sheet and applied the Study Action, in which I have one dot. I also have the Flexible Gamer special ability which grants me an extra die on Grocking Indie Darlings. That’s my start, which in FitD is pretty good. Even one die gives you a 50% chance of succeeding, though with consequences depending on your position in the conflict.
I also had help. Craig explained his experiences in running FitD as the con was gathering, and Tanya had some handy cheat sheets for helping with Position and Effect, which at one stress cost to one of them, came together to give me an aiding die. I’m on three dice now. In play we found a one stress aiding die was a great reward for the cost, and the group worked together to support each other like any outcast Cell should.
I roll my three dice: 4,5,6. A six is the best result and I suffer no consequences for my success. With a Standard level Effect, that ticks two of the four segment clock. Great progress, but FitD is still in the fight, with its fictional hand waving and concensus powered wibbling. I make a second roll: 1,3,6. Victory! I take the 6, full success, two more final segments on the clock completed and the game succumbs with no stress or harm to me. I’ve applied the aiding die over two rolls, rather than just the one, as I wanted to affirm the advantage such good guidance gave me over the whole system wrestling scene.
In reality that is made possible either by a favourable flashback scene, or more likely by ‘pushing myself’, granting a +1 die for two stress.
Actions, like skills, are stll the foundation of the game, whatever the fiction does to your position, though I wonder if characters start with quite enough dots in them? Plus, somethings that I am used to seeing in a skill list weren’t obviously there, making me wonder if they are picked up in outther ways, perhaps in downtime.
Speaking of which, I’m conscious I only scratched the surface of the game with a one shot. Players remarked that it felt like a sandbox, primed for longer term play. I did nothing with the Cell sheet, other than giving all players an extra dot in an action of their choice. I’m pretty sure that it should have been one action that they all share, but my sense that player characters were sparsely served with actions encouraged me to open it out as a ‘you are greater, thanks to the sum of the parts’. Much of the intro game was ‘free play’, partly because the setup scene took them completely away from the primed Quest. We didn’t really have time to explore downtime, or the grinding of factional clock gears. A Community Cell check for some Stress recovery was the sum of that bit of the structure. I slipped in a Long Rest to give one Stress recovery as a cheeky nod to D&D.
On Twitter, EvilGaz described Pathfinder 2e as sheet music precisely played, whilst FitD is fusion jazz, where you just pick up and play baby. Although I appreciate the quaity of the simile, I feel it simultaneously reinforced my sense of fictional vaguery and denigrated the freeform nature of mechanical games. Still I like jazz, and found in play a game that I could entertain with. Good news, as FitD is getting used for A¦¦state too, which I’m looking forward to. More of this system to come in my gaming I think, and may check out the hack adice for something of my own.
Nice.