The Black Campbell

I spent last night reading over the Smallville RPG from Margaret Wies and company.  I bought it in electronic format, so I can’t speak to the quality of the physical product, but my experience with MWP has been that their books are top-notch in production value.  The .pdf has a wealth of pics from the show, is full color for all the pages, and includes a full table of contents so that you can navigate around the book quickly.  (Funnily, the font for the TOC is illegible on the iPad, but that might have been due to the program I’m reading it on.)

The first chapter is the usual “What is a Roleplaying Game?” “What is Smallville?” filler.  The meat starts in “Basics”.  Here you get the basic format of the game:  the GM is a “Watchtower”, player characters are “Leads”, major NPC/villains are “Features”, and Extras are minor NPCs.  The effect is to try and capture some of the television quality of the show.  Central to character creation is the Relationships of the Leads and these other elements.  The book has a series of examples to show how the players and GM get together to craft an intricate web of tensions between the leads and features.  It’s a great idea for mapping out a TV series, or a novel…it’s a bit daunting to new players, I suspect.  Hell…I’ve been gaming 30+ years and I think it’s overly complex.

In essence, as you read through the character creation and basic system rules, they aren’t modeling a superhero game…it’s rules for a soap opera.  I get the sense it does this quite well, but it is a shambles if you were looking to cook up a few characters easily and jump right into a game — one of the long-time strengths of Cortex.

The system is sharply different from Cortex — the engine for the other MWP works.  Instead of the usual attributes for strength, intellect, etc. you have DRIVES — motivations that your character has attachments to , be they Power or Truth or Duty.  These have a die rating from d4 to d12, in keeping with Cortex (d2s are gone.)  you have ASSETS which are broken up into Distinctions — things that make your character unique like “Big Heart” or “Martial Artist”, and Abilities — in this case mostly superpowers.  Abilities have a descriptor (Blast could be a heat beam from your eyes, or an electric shock from your hand…) and some kind of limitation where it won’t work (X-Ray vision and lead, for example.)  You have RESOURCES — Extras (minor NPCs) and Locations.  You don’t have Life Points (Hit Points for the D&D fans out there.) — you have STRESSES.  Once again, the point is to emulate the various effects of the relationships.  These tensions are rated in dice as you play and those dice can work against you in play.  Stresses include Angry, Afraid, Exhausted, Injured, or Insecure…at first glance I really like this take on damage.  The more I think about it, it could be a very good alternative damage system for Cortex, if it were done right.

Most of the rolling you’ll do in Smallville are contested feats:  you’re rolling a combination of Drives, Assets, Abilities, or what have you vs. the most applicable of the NPCs or PCs you are trying to hit, convince, interrogate, whatever.  the drives explain why you are doing something, your relationship die might add if it’s your friend in trouble, etc.  You take the two highest results from the dice rolled and compare it to those of the other person.  A failure can impart Stress on the loser, which can be used against them if the contests continue.  It’s pretty simple and elegant…it’s not Cortex.

Speaking of character creation…it’s a nightmare.  It might be easier if you are putting together characters together and spending an evening or two mapping out the campaign.  There’s a series of charts using basic background archetypes and events to craft the character’s various (and I think too many) ratings in things.  Relationships are mapped out at each stage.  It means building a test character to see if you can do it while reading the book…not easy.  I tried to build Wonder Woman, just to see if I could; she’s got tons of powers, etc. so I wanted to see if I could pull it off.  I gave up halfway through.  Without setting up the relationship web, it just doesn’t work.

Once again, if you want to go heavily collaborative and spend a ton of time spitballing character ideas and relationships…this could be oodles of fun.  I’m not in that category.  That said, there is a framework of a damned good game system here that is loose enough to handle superheroes — one of the more annoying genres for roleplaying as it tends to lead to very heavy bookkeeping for character building (Champions or GURPS.)  The chart, the massive array of Drives, Abilities, Distinctions, Assets, Locations, Extras, Relationships…I think it’s overly complicated, and while that might give you a good framework for soap opera, it’s a pain in the @$$ for putting together a bunch of characters and getting into play quickly.

I will admit that some of the issues with the character creation might have come from using an electronic version of the book — lipping around to find explanations and examples I needed was annoying and often I would lose track of what i was looking for  Wait…was that a Distinction?  An ability?  Oooo…Castle‘s on TV…

There is however, a wealth of good material for how to craft sotries, a campaign (or series), and how to handle interpersonal relationships in a game.  It’s a fantastic GM resource for the new player, if you’re not using the system — lots of ideas that would be applicable to planning a game, how to set up scenes, how to maintain tension, etc…all stuff that can be learned from watching TV or movies.  (Or searching this site for my Setting the Scene posts.)

There’s also a chapter on managing online gaming, which is no surprise as there’s a healthy PbP community on the Cortex Game website, and once again — it’s a fantastic resource for that.  But as a playable game, I’m a bit dubious…and it makes me worry about what we’re going to see in Cortex Plus (the generic rules set that’s going to bolt rules from Smallville and Leverage onto the older set.)

Despite the wealth of examples and charts, the game is overly complex, in my opinion, and while I suspect it will do the job if your group wants to experience what its like to be in a series writers’ room, I don’t know how fun it would be.  There are elements that could be bolted onto your Cortex game, with some work, but overall the main utility of this book is as a gamemaster advice book.

Cost was $19.99 at drivethrurpg.net, the physical book is $40.  This is the first MWP product I can say I don’t feel I got my money’s worth.

Okay…I broke down and bought an e-copy of Smallville RPG from Margaret Weiss’ bunch.  I’m a huge fan of the Cortex system, and after hearing about the changes for the setting, I figured I’d go ahead and have a shufty at this rules set.  (I’ve not watched the show, but I do like a good superhero game.)

I’ll do a real review in a day or two, but my initial thoughts:  it’s a soap-opera RPG with stuff for supers tossed in.  Some of the mods could be used to good effect in Cortex (there’s a Cortex Plus in the offing that I suspect does just that.)

I’m a bit iffy on it, but might be interested in running a test game just to see how it plays.  More to follow…