Saturday 29 September 2012

The Broken City: Background Goes Splat

Different game systems have different strengths and weaknesses. Some are easy to pick up and play with no preparation. Some have rules that cover every scenario you could want. Some give you a set of tools that are flexible. Some are written in friendly, accessible language. To me, the biggest strength of the World of Darkness games is the depth of background they provide for players and games masters. From the Corebook to the most obscure supplement, every book is packed with story elements to inspire you.

  However, the problem with this is there is so much to learn, and you have to know what to pick and what to leave. It's important to remember as a GM that you get to spend 6 months or however long learning and memorising this stuff, but you'll have to roll it out to your players in game and big chunks of exposition are dull when really everyone wants to be having arguments and blowing things up.

  A big portion of this is how you utilise character classes (what in traditional fantasy games might be things like fighter, thief, wizard, etc) These are sometimes referred to Splats, for reasons too complicated to go into, and World of Darkness games use what we'll call a "dual-axis splat system".



  Okay, here is your warning: this post is about to dive deep into the Mage: The Awakening background and setting. If you thought things were already nerdy and complicated, you ain't seen nothing yet.

  The "dual-axis splat system" basically means a large part of your character is defined by two choices. For Mage, these are Path and Order. Path is what type of mage you are and what type of magic you are strongest at. Each Path has certain personality traits that are associated with it, and archetypes they fit into. Choosing your Path is a meta-game decision, meaning the players pick it, but their characters have no say. It's a bit like being sorted into a House in Harry Potter - JK Rowling decided Cedric Diggory was a Hufflepuff; Cedric didn't.

Mage Paths
Acanthus - Free-wheeling, easygoing enchanters, strongest in Time and Fate magic
Mastigos - Ambitious, driven warlocks, with dominion over Space and Mind magic
Moros - Grim, stern necromancers specialising in Death and Matter magic
Obrimos - Devout, bold theurgists with power over Forces and Prime magic
Thyrsus - Passionate, wild shamans most capable with Spirit and Life magic

  The second splat is Order, which is what sort of role your character plays within the Mage world. Joining an Order means you get trained and carries both benefits and obligations. Choosing an Order is an in-game decision, meaning your character is the one who decides where they're going, and it can produce some in-game drama and intrigue. It's like picking a career, or a university. My players are at this point in their game - 4 out of 5 have picked Orders and have just started training.

Mage Orders
The Adamantine Arrow - Warrior wizards focused on action and betterment through conflict
The Silver Ladder - Ambassadors and advisers, determined to help Mage and non-Mage alike
The Guardians of the Veil - Spies and secret police responsible for keeping magic hidden
The Mysterium - Scholars and explorers gathering and preserving ancient knowledge
The Free Council - Modern upstart Order of activists and inventors, finding magic in the modern world

  It's easy to see how these two decisions can go a long way to defining your character within the game - you're essentially deciding your personality and your role in the world. Within a group of players, there's usually a fairly even split of choices, but there doesn't have to be. There can be duplicates or omissions, and players can emphasise different aspects of Paths or different roles within Orders.

  As there are five players in my game, I decided that each Path had to represented. There are in-game reasons for this I won't go into, but it also ensures balance in gameplay. Each Path has certain specialties, and if you miss one out, it's harder to tell certain stories, especially early in the game. If no-one is Moros, you're less likely to have someone who can deal with ghosts. If there's no Acanthus, stories about destiny or prophecy are trickier. Forcing players into a "no duplicates" policy restricts them slightly, but I think it pays off.

  The players themselves have decided to split themselves between Orders. There was a lot of in-game discussion about this subject, and as each Order has their own magical traditions and secrets, the group decided to try and game the system and share this information between themselves. We'll see how this works out for them... (cue evil GM laughter)

  Of course, this is the standard background for the Mage game. If you decide to mess with it, things get even more complicated, which is what I'll get to next time...

Monday 24 September 2012

Play To Z: Cross to Doolittle

Some Observations

Holy Playlist Interruptions, Batman! This chunk of albums saw my first shift off the alphabetical order due to a new addition to the discography. I downloaded Talib Kweli's fantastic mixtape Attack The Block (inspired by the movie of the same name) and, having listened to Stereogum's Cruel Summer 2011 Mixtape, realised I didn't have their 2012 one, so downloaded that to.

I also finally borrowed a copy of Camp by Childish Gambino off a friend - I've got all his mixtapes but hadn't got round to buying the album, and having finally given it a good listen, I think I'm going to be one of those awful people saying "I preferred his earlier stuff". Camp seems weighed down with his preoccupation with how he is viewed by the rest of rap culture, but doesn't offer any huge insights or truly unique perspectives. A couple of tracks dealing with this topic would have been interesting, but giving over so much of the album to it dilutes the potency of the message.

Listening to just under two hours of Crystal Castles non-stop does strange things to your brain. I felt like I'd slipped into some weird 16-bit nightmare inside a vast haunted cathedral. It made doing photocopying at work a lot more interesting.



Daisies of the Galaxy was the first Eels album I owned, and remains one of my favourites. It's arguably the most positive, radio-friendly of his albums, but still run through with a deep vein of melancholy and despair that serves to heighten the happy moments. I have a very vivid memory from about 7 years ago of walking down St Benedict's Street in Norwich on a warm, sunny St Patrick's Day, bag full of comics and headed to the pub to celebrate my now-housemate Bret's birthday, with "Packing Blankets" on my iPod (or possibly Discman at the time). It was a transcendentally happy moment, one of those perfect instants when music helps crystalise an experience in your mind.

TV On The Radio's Dear Science is a pretty much flawless album. To my mind, it's their strongest record, a fantastic blend of danceable beats, triumphant horns and lyrical mastery. It feels very much "of it's time" (end of the Bush administration, beginning of Obama) but it doesn't let that weigh it down the way other records sometimes do when aiming to comment on modern society. There's enough about it that's timeless to not feel like a time capsule.

Definitely Maybe, Oasis' debut record, is filled with mostly decent tunes that are, without exception, about a minute too long.

In the ultimate karaoke bar, where you have access to every song imaginable, my pick will always be the live version of "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies that is included on Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits. The energy of the performance really adds a whole other layer of urgency to the song, and the big bellowing chorus is a classic power ballad wrapped around a portrait of depression.



"Debaser" by the Pixies is one of my all-time favourite songs. I could, and have, listened to it a dozen times on repeat and not got bored. It's a flawless song, beautiful in it's power and economy. It's a little piece of magic.

The Subtle And Mysterious Art of the Mixtape

Among the albums I listened to in this batch were two mixtapes by the music website Stereogum, as well as two film soundtracks (as opposed to scores), Dazed and Confused and Deathproof. Soundtracks and mixtapes have a lot in common, although obviously soundtracks are also beholden to the events of the film they support. They are about creating a mood, and conveying some kind of meaning, sometimes a story, sometimes a sentiment, all of it using someone else's music.

Among my various skills with little real-world application, I consider myself a proficient maker of mixtapes (or whatever you want to call the CD equivalent). For a while, I posted a bunch of friends a new mix every 3 months, sometimes simply a collection of songs I enjoyed, sometimes built around a theme (one was the soundtrack to a film that didn't exist, a nice little link back to my earlier point). I've made soundtracks for role-playing games I've been involved with, created mixes for friends, lovers and acquaintances.

I learned my skills from some of the basic rules delivered in High Fidelity and found I had a good ear for transitions. I often wish I could go back to my teenaged self and tell him not to spend so much money on plastic Space Marines and instead invest in a pair of decks and some speakers - I think I would have made an alright DJ. Instead, I'm limited to mixes and the occasional party playlist (the mixtape's grown-up, meaner brother).

A good mixtape takes you on a journey, like any good album, but it also uses the mix of artists to create a dialogue, a conversation between the changing sound of the album and the listener. Audience is important to bear in mind, as is what effect. Lyrical themes can be carried from song to song, and if your lucky, images can recur and evolve. Put in enough work, and it's like constructing a sonnet from a dozen broken-up haiku.

Rediscovered Gem

"Destroy Rock And Roll" by Mylo



Wednesday 12 September 2012

Play To Z: Cinderella's Eyes To Crosby, Stills & Nash

I've been busy, ill and my mind has been on mundane troubles, so I don't have a big central thesis for this post. Nonetheless, it's been a great chunk of albums, which I'll detail below...

Some Observations

Nicola Roberts' album is great, of course, and if you haven't listened to it, you're a fool, but her cover of "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" is surprisingly nuanced. Her voice suits the song very well, and the 80s electronica-sheen her version adds works well.

Codes And Keys is a bit of a disappointing show for Death Cab For Cutie. Apart from the title track and "Doors Unlocked And Opened", there's no real standout songs, and the whole album slid by without me really noticing.

It's interesting to go back to The College Dropout and find Kanye West more or less exactly how he is at the moment. He arrived almost fully formed (which for some reason has me picturing him taking Venus' place in Botticelli's The Birth Of Venus) and, although his sound has evolved, his lyrical skill, his personality and his ego were there from the very beginning. The album focuses heavily on his car accident and his experiences in college, and is a fairly stunning dissection of modern life for young, middle-class African-American men and women.



The Wallpaper remix of "Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell" by Das Racist is a stunning, stunning party track. As Chief Playlist Wrangler at our house parties, I always make sure it drops at some point, but the only problem is very few people know it, so it doesn't get quite the reception it should. Ho hum.

I prefer MGMT's second album Congratulations to their first. I feel like I'm in the minority on this, but I don't know for sure.

My friend Alex, who's musical taste I respect immensely, hates The Fratellis. My friend Bret, who I live with and who is consider a brother, loves them. Where do I sit? Well, they're as subtle as a knee-capping, and their songs aren't about anything other than themselves (not that that discounts them from being great - "Groove Is In The Heart" isn't exactly deep and I've killed men for saying it's not wonderful). Their lyrics are often nonsensical and the melodies are hardly varied. But despite all that, even Alex can't deny that they are bloody catchy, and just like "Combination...", "Chelsea Dagger" is a frequent party tune because people know it, and it gets them moving. And isn't that the point?

The 2004 Pavement reissue Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins, is a double album with 49 tracks. 49. It's the original album, B-sides, tracks from compilations, live BBC sessions and other unreleased treats. It weakens considerably as it goes on, but it's still a magnificent collection, and the original album is a classic.

Rediscovered Gem

"Heavy Metal" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Sunday 9 September 2012

The Broken City: A Question of Rules

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the role-playing game I'm running, The Broken City. We're on a little bit of a hiatus at the moment, while various players are on holiday (the lucky dastards) so it seemed a good time to write a bit more about the game.

  Role-playing games can seem a bit of an odd duck to those who've never delved into them. They grew out of more traditional war-gaming (the type where two players line up armies on either side of a board and attempt to destroy each other) which, I suppose, grew out of games like chess, but to my mind, their real strength is as a way of telling stories together. Like improv comedy or a well-rehearsed anecdote amongst friends, role-playing games are about crafting a story that entertains everyone.



  However, your audience and your performers are the same people, which leads to some conflict of interest. Everyone wants the story to be filled with intrigue and adventure, betrayal and humour, bitter defeats and hard-fought victories. But when you have spent countless hours building up a character, it can be hard to watch them fail at something, even when it makes for a better story. That's where the rules come in.

  There's a huge range of rules systems out there, and the one you pick can hugely affect your style of play. Of course, if you want to run a space adventure game, you'll need a system that gives you rules for spaceships, zero gravity and alien races, but there whatever universe you want to create, there are probably at least a couple of systems you could use. Some are hyper detailed, with rules for deciding your characters height and charts mapping how range affects the accuracy of various weapons, while others can fit their rules on three sides of A4. They might use dice, cards or rock paper scissors to determine things.

  In The Broken City, I'm using the World of Darkness system, by White Wolf. World of Darkness is a flexible system meant for contemporary stories with a supernatural bent, usually in a world like ours, but a little worse (hence the name). Anything from Supernatural to Drive could work well within the World of Darkness. As a system, it strikes a nice balance between detail and game flow, which is the trade-off at the heart of most systems. The basic rulebook gives you the foundation for creating characters and running games, and there are various expansions for playing different games - vampires, werewolves, monster hunters and mages.



  Mages, or rather Mage: The Awakening, is the game I am using for The Broken City. The rule book is an intimidatingly thick tome, containing a wealth of background information and a huge section on spells and how to create them. But even with this surplus of rules and figures, there were some tweaks I wanted to make.

  The idea of certain objects or ingredients being necessary for spells is a fairly common one (think Buffy or Harry Potter) but isn't a huge part of Mage, where magic is a more internal force. However, spell ingredients create a sort of economy within the game - they are something to be traded, bartered for, stolen, or quested after. These are all great opportunities for stories, so I tweaked the rules for extended spells (ones cast over a long time, as opposed to in the heat of the moment) to be stronger if ingredients were used.

  There's other examples, but it's a brief glimpse into how changing the rules can change where the story can go. As for changing the background, well. that's a tale for a whole other post...

Friday 7 September 2012

Play To Z: Bitter Melon Farm to Chutes Too Narrow

Some Observations

I will always favour the immediacy of the catchy pop hook over the intricacy of the artsy flourish. Well, maybe not always, but listening to Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces certainly made me feel that way. Any worthwhile melodies they happen to find always collapse quickly into sparse, spasmodic instrumentation and forced rhymes. Give me "Call Me Maybe" any day.

"Naked In The Rain" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers is about Anthony Kiedis wanting to be able to talk to animals. How have I only just caught this? The chorus is "Doctor Doolittle, what's your secret?"

If you don't like "Dancing On My Own" by Robyn then I will disregard every opinion you ever had or have.



I missed out on a chance to see We Are Scientists at the Norwich Arts Centre last month by essentially being a forgetful goof, and listening to Brain Thrust Mastery makes me really regret that. They're one of those bands who don't do anything extraordinary, but they consistently put out great, danceable rock.

"Biology" by Girls Aloud continues to be the best pop song of the first decade of this millennium. I've written about this before, but if you don't trust me, go have a listen, then come back and try to argue against it.

Doubling Down On Greatness

Listening to my music in such a fixed, rigid order throws up odd patterns and connections. Sometimes the jumps between albums are natural (Milkman's Algorithms into Girl Talk's All Day), sometimes they create odd juxtapositions that work (Japandroids' Celebration Rock into Beastie Boys' Check Your Head) and sometimes they are just flat out jarring (Annie's Anniemal into Gang of Four's Another Day/Another Dollar). However, in the past week of listening, two artists have managed double bills - two albums that happened to sit next to each other alphabetically and compliment each other perfectly. And those two artists just happened to be fucking icons.

Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks come from very different periods in his career, separated by almost 10 years. Blonde on Blonde is part of a trilogy of albums (along with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited) produced in a 14-month period when Dylan had just "gone electric"; a trilogy and period that is viewed as more-or-less unparalleled by modern musical critics.

When I mentioned I was listening to Blonde on Blonde on Twitter, my friend Tom and I got into a discussion where he described the record as Dylan's "lion-with-the-cage-door-open moment, where he realised 'I'm Bob fucking Dylan! I can do what I want!'" I couldn't have put it better myself. There's an ambition to the arrangements and lyrics that shows an artist really reaching for something new and exciting, and pushing at what he was capable of.

Blood on the Tracks, from 1975, is a very different album. Although Dylan denies it, it is universally recognised to chart his divorce from his wife Sara in bittersweet, perfectly-realised detail. From the anger and superiority of "Idiot Wind" to "If You See Her, Say Hello", which positively swims in sadness, it's a portrait of a conflicted, heartbroken couple collapsing in on themselves, and it sets the bar for every confessional singer-songwriter to come.



Born in the USA and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen are separated by a similar amount of time, and a similar change in sound. While Dylan went from his creative peak to a critical resurgence, Springsteen moved from a breakthrough hit to an era-defining monster. Born To Run finds Springsteen as a young man, his lyrics still preoccupied with adolescent ideas of rebellion and romance. His songs are blue-collar soap operas of wild young racers, wilder first love and shady meetings with dubious characters. However, they're still tinged with sadness and cynicism, and an awareness of the inevitable destinies of his cast of small-town heroes.

Born in the USA was a move towards a more radio-friendly, pop sound for The Boss, and although the title track was adopted as a patriotic anthem, he managed to retain his realist's view of American life, taking in the heartbreak and the tragedy with the triumphs. Even though the album skews more towards universal sentiments and emotions, and less towards his earlier portraits of life, tracks like "My Hometown" and "Downbound Train" bring the album back home. The album works with a bigger palette of sound, introducing synthesised arrangements a world away from previous album Nebraska's stripped down acoustics. However, the young characters of Born to Run are now grown, reminiscing on their earlier days and reflecting on a life filled with hard work and turmoil. For an album making a deliberate attempt at mass commercialism, it manages to retain Springsteen's core themes astonishingly well.

Rediscovered Gem

"Cardiac Arrest" by Teddybears featuring Robyn