Let us tell a tale as written by...
Tales are the adventure modules of Swords. They can be as simple as a single style or as elaborate as an actual module. For me, I rather like a Tale that is a title, one or two styles, and an overtrick. Such as:
"The Legion of the Damned"
A Tale of Horror and Dark Magicks
Overtrick: Inevitable Foe—A phalanx of skeletons dripping with their own fresh gore.
In #SundayAMSwords this past weekend we played a tale comprised simply of a single style: ...of Beauty. It was astounding. We had the torches in an inn extinguished so one rogue could blow the embers from the hearth across the ceiling in the pattern of constellations. Dawn herself appeared in all her rosy, scintillating glory. And captivating patterns of light and dark moving about in the silent depths of the ocean.
The purpose of a style is to plant a flag in your game that says, "We will tell this sort of story," and then to give you a single rule that may aid you in that endeavor. The rule tantalizes you. We all love rules, that's why we're here. We want to toy with them, see how they tick, and see what they can show us about the game.* But it's the flag that is the most important element of the style. The rule exists to remind you of your flag.
Thus far, all the styles in Swords are about themes or things that can appear in your tale. One of my intents with styles, however, is to eventually let groups base them on authors they'd like to emulate. A tale as written by... rather than a tale of....
What makes an author's work definitively of that author is in some ways deeply personal. What I see and love in Fritz Leiber's work may not be what you see and love in his work. It gets cloudier the more people you get involved and the more media that is focused on the work. 1982's Conan the Barbarian is not Howard's Conan and the 2011 film is neither. Simply planting a flag will not do. Not everyone will see the flag on the same hill. Any added rules would only be ignored by folks running for their own hill the same way folks ignore their GPS when driving around their hometown.
It is more effective to use a constellation of non-author styles followed by an "as written by" flag. The beauty in this Sunday's game coupled with the sad news of Tanith Lee's recent passing put me in mood to create just such a style for just a sliver of what I find so captivating about her work: A Tale of Beauty, Seduction and Sorcery as Written by Tanith Lee. You could have a wildly different cluster of styles in mind for Lee's work, but if we sat down to play this tale together, we'd all be on the same page. In fact, even if you had never read a word written by Tanith Lee, I suspect you'd have no trouble keeping up.
Show us what constellations of styles would you use to play a tale as written by one of your favorite authors.
* In fact, one often overlooked definition of the word play means "the extent to which a part of a mechanism can move freely." ( Number 11 in the noun definitions: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/play#Noun) Rules define that extent of that free movement and we love exploring that.
This game still kind of floors me. It's strengths are also its weaknesses in a way. What I mean is that it is so mytho-poetic in its styling (themes, mechanics, everything). I love how the eidelons and simulacra explicitly have you drawing inspiration from art (paintings, yes, but also songs and such). And how the game play is kind of a real-time dialogue where the questions isn't whether the mechanics slow you down it's whether you can keep up with them -- they force you (in a good way) to make fiction happen. So, very cool and very different from other stuff out there. With all that, it isn't the most approachable game, oddly. I mean it seems like it should be because character creation is all ... well ... "CREATION" (purely creating fiction bits to use later), but it feels a bit mysterious to most gamers at the outset unless there is a good teacher. I know the community has worked on it, but a really good onramp/process bible/whatever for Overlords would be a great thing to achieve.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it's hard to learn, but then afterwards it's completely intuitive for most folks. (But then I'm derailing Eppy's question)
ReplyDeleteWe can derail! People can bite on the demand above as they please.
ReplyDeleteObviously my relationship with Swords is different from everybody else's, but when I played my first game of MonkeyDome I remember something clicking as it was happening that recalled me to my first RPG ever. I think the first game of Swords is always an act of faith, just as the first game of D&D always was back in my day. Nowadays, D&D's DNA is in so many video games, that I suspect a lot of folks who are coming to it for the first time already sort of believe it will work. But when I played my first RPG, I had to take that leap assisted only by the promise of what was to come. And it was thrilling.
Swords is probably the same way. It doesn't look a whole hell of a lot like something you'd recognize, so you feel like you're going to have a lot of questions once you start. But I think there's a moment early on for most folks where it clicks and then suddenly it's like, "Oh, yeah, of course."
That's true. The faith thing. In fact, the way to explain it might be to not explain it much at all.
ReplyDelete/sub
ReplyDeleteJack Vance's Cugel stories are tales of Betrayal and High Adventure
ReplyDeleteFor me, Swords Without Master clicked when I finally played it. I couldn't really grasp what the game was like from the text. It was too different from what I was used to. When I played it, I knew it was a game that worked for me.
Great Cugel styles!
ReplyDeleteRock and Wave, Wind and Word.
ReplyDelete"A Tale of Wonder and True Namings" as written by Ursula K. LeGuin.
Overtrick: The Old Powers Awake—An ancient spirit trapped in the earth is alerted and commands its nameless servants to steal or harness a rogue's power.