#RPGaDay2017 day 24: Share a PWYW publisher who should be... better known?

Part of an ongoing series, occasionally updated in real-time!

IT'S BLOG O' CLOCK, homies.

#RPGaDay2017 day 24: Share a PWYW publisher who should be charging more?

Nah fam, that's a pretty asinine premise for a question. PWYW is a pretty sweet business model, and I'mma just disregard the fundamental assumption that it's devaluing a product here. And if you're stuck on that, research by Kim (2009¹), Gneezy (2010²), and many, many more that I'm not going to list³, shows pretty conclusively that that's simply not the case.

Sure, sometimes people make less than they might have otherwise done - as it turns out, setting price points is a tricky thing in any model - but sometimes they make more. A lot more.

Sorry, fam; but if you wanna drop that wack pseudo-science not-marketing, you'd best come correct.

Having said that, here's some of my favorite PWYW stuff.

Fate Core, Toolkit, and Worlds

Check out Evil Hat's Drive-Thru selection. I mean, damn. If you like narrative-focused RPGs⁴, there's enough here to keep you playing for a long, long time. Plus, their art is lovely, the books are smartly laid out, and the Worlds of Adventure explore a wide variety of different themes. You can probably find something  you like there.

Also, apparently the excellent War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus is PWYW now! I bought it at retail, and regret that not for a single second; but if you haven't checked out Sophie Lagace's adaptation of this Grimsical game, you might want to consider doing so now.

It's really good!

Big ups to Evil Hat, and its Patrons on Patreon that have made all this super rad stuff available.

Quill

A solitaire RPG, Quill is simple: roll dice, write letters, rinse and repeat. Fun and different!

Nothing much to add; you're either hyped to write
letters, or you're moving on. As is just.

OSR Sci-FI

"But Killstring," you ask...

Dude, that's not how we format questions here

Oh, for the love of...

Don't create a format and then not use it! You'll confuse people!

Fine. Go ahead.

...Maybe I don't want to anymore.

Seriously?

Kidding! Anyway. But Killstring, I ask, I thought you didn't like OSR?

Who ever said that I have to enjoy something myself to see merit in it? Listen friends, I literally have a degree in evaluating media, and I'm excited to use it⁵! Besides, there's not nearly enough of this sentiment in Geek subculture; we get strangely tribal about our sub-fandom, to the point of being hostile.

Ain't got time for that ish.

So yeah, I'm not a big fan of OSR games, but these two make me wish I was. They're incredibly stylish, flavorful, and well put-together. 

Lookin' Fly

First, White Star.

If you're looking for something that goes after the feel of classic Space Opera, hard, then you could do a heck of a lot worse than White Star. Based off the Swords & Wizardry White Box (which I'm not linking, 'cause I have no idea if it's any good or not. OSR homies tend to like S&W, but I bounced off it pretty hard), this game unabashedly gives you rules to play Not-Star-Wars, as well as Not-Other-Classic-Sci-Fi.

It's fun! I think it's fun.

But after that, we're gonna break the category a little bit; this next game is free; there's a Pay-What-We-Want version available too, should it catch your eye. The game in question?

Stars Without Number

Hell yeah.

This is the game that made me desperately wish I liked OSR. It's so, so good. Hell, even if you (like me) cringe at the sight of STR, DEX, CON, etc., there is so much good material here, that it's worth picking up as a resource for your Space Opera games, even if you're allergic to d20s. It's got a wealth of amazing supplements, piles and piles of useful tables, and is just smartly put together. 

So, so fresh. 

There's a free version that I mentioned, but in looking for images, I discovered that there's a Kickstarter going on for a new edition. Six days left as of publishing this, and it too looks super fresh. Check this art: 

Dope.

The new edition will have a free version too, and it looks to have considerable polish. I don't usually hype projects that I'm:

1. Not involved in
2. Not interested in playing
3. Not done by anyone I know

but if you dig OSR stuff, this seems like a worthwhile use of your time and/or money.

And hey, since we busted the format anyway, here's my all-time favorite PWYW product:

How come I end up where I started?

Though it's since gone traditional, this gorgeous album launched PWYW models into the public consciousness, and I, for one, think we're better off for it.

~Killstring

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1 - Ju-Young Kim, Martin Natter, Martin Spann (2009) Pay What You Want: A New Participative Pricing Mechanism. Journal of Marketing: January 2009, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 44-58.

2 - Gneezy, A., Gneezy, U., Nelson, L. D., & Brown, A. (2010). Shared social responsibility: A field experiment in pay-what-you-want pricing and charitable giving. Science, 329(5989), 325-327.

3 - This is, after all, not a scholarly article, and I'll be citing all damn night if I want to make this point properly.

4 - I do! :)

5 - Not that this really counts as objective critical review, nor am I really trying to do so. But when I can work in an "I used my degree today" joke, I do so. You've been warned.

#RPGaDay2017 Day 9: What is a good RPG to play for about 10 sessions?

Hi! This wasn't written on the day in question; I'm backfilling here. Because I didn't start writing these until the 16th, but I decided to give it a whirl anyway. Expect these to be a bit more brief than usual. We good? Good. 

Let's blog, homies.

#RPGaDay2017 Day 9: What is a good RPG to play for about 10 sessions?

Appropriately-paced Story Games is probably my favorite answer. Get a copy of Robin Laws'¹ Hillfolk, pick a setting, and block out a big plot arc, like a season of a TV show. 

Really, a lot of games can work beautifully in this conceit; I often think of my RPGs in terms of episodes and seasons; tv, manga, however it makes sense to you is the best thing to use. 

I have a lot of love in my heart for stories that are allowed to have beginnings, middles, and ends. My love of comics and pro wrestling also attests that I have a deeply abiding affection for long-term storytelling, continuity, and enough room for characters to grow organically. 

These can be oppositional desires, at times. So it's good to have both. 

Other recommendations, since I can't leave well enough alone

• Fate in all its iterations is pretty suited to this format. Easy to pick up and get rolling with, and with an advancement system that's more about personal changes than a fun minigame.
• PbtA games are likewise well-suited, for all the same reasons as Fate, although its advancement is a fun minigame, albeit a short one. Playbooks make it super easy to hit the ground running.
• Feng Shui 2 is a very different sort of game, but it's fantastic for this type of game, and its playbooks are even lower-maintenance than Apocalypse World's!
• Savage Worlds is great if you want a bunch of pulpy, fun, combat scenes, and has a bunch of sweet settings ready to go.
• Pathfinder/D&D, despite what one might think, is actually pretty great for this IMO. 10 sessions is enough to encounter something too big for you, advance two levels, and have a climactic showdown. Making builds is where a lot of the fun of these games lives for me - but I find that actually playing those builds to be far less satisfying; 10 sessions is about the upper limit of the mechanics remaining fun for me, in most cases. So this kind of self-contained story is perfect; make a 4th level character, hit 6th, and express that build in a boss fight? Choice.

Everything in its right place

I love long, sprawling games. I love it when PCs have the ability to pursue what they're interested in without the pressure of a timer breathing down their necks. Heck, in my ongoing Sidereal Demesne game, my players have spent something like four (6-8 hour) sessions at their debutante ball and afterparty, and we're not done yet². Now, there was a serious assassination attempt, but there was also a lot of dancing, conversation, and plotting.

This wouldn't have happened in a 10-session game.

On the other hand, there's something really satisfying about a fast-paced story that manages to tell a cohesive narrative. Also, it allows for really big, dramatic moments to occur without players worrying too much about losing their primary engagement point with the game. 

I love season finales in any medium. Short games get you there faster, and often with just as much wallop. 

Three cheers for wallop.

~Killstring

* * *
1 - Possibly the worst-named RPG of all time. I love Robin Laws, I love Story Games, I loved Hamlet's Hit Points, and - once I found it hiding inside - I love Dramasystem. Hillfolk was basically targeted directly at me - and I absolutely gave it a hard pass, because who wants to play a game called Hilfolk? I thought it was gritty, iron-age OSR, which I have less than no interest in. 

And someone looking for gritty, iron-age OSR would be pretty surprised to find a scene-calling Story Game. Losses all around.

2 - Players, if you're reading this, I love you both immensely. Never change.

RPGaDay 2017: #8: What is a good RPG to play for sessions of two hours or less?

Hi! This wasn't written on the day in question; I'm backfilling here. Because I didn't start writing these until the 16th, but I decided to give it a whirl anyway. 

Expect these to be a bit more brief than usual. We good? Good. 

Let's blog, homies.

RPGADAY 2017 DAY 8: WHAT is a good rpg to play for sessions of two hours or less?

A couple qualifiers on this: while I know that a lot of the gaming scene has kids, and plays for short stretches on weeknights, my local group basically won't get out of bed for anything less than a five-to-six hour game, and weekend sessions are assumed to be closer to eight. I ran a game - the Star Wars-powered Mass Effect game referenced in #1 - and aside from the odd holiday or illness cancellation, it ran rain or shine for two-and-a-half years, on alternating Saturdays. That game started at 2:00 PM, and I have myself a hard cutoff point of 2 AM at which point I would not GM anymore.

It was a lot of fun, though often exhausting.

In university, however, my group was often strapped for time. So most of my thoughts should be interpreted with whatever additional context is needed there.

Anyway. Here's a couple!

Probably not surprising

Fate games; Core and Otherwise

I've found Fate to have kind of an inverse learning curve. If someone hasn't really played tabletop RPGs before, it's incredibly easy to pick up, runs smooth, and has very little lead-up time before players feel proficient. And if someone has played a lot of traditional tabletop RPGs - D&D and the like - it can be something of a hurdle to get over. 

But that's just until you've figured out how to play. Once you do, Fate's loose "scene" structure really lends itself to packing some serious content into a short time frame. Core, variants like Nova Praxis, or Diaspora, or Core-powered games like the excellent Tianxia, it's all pretty well-suited to short games. As I believe was its intent - Spirit of the Century was in many ways developed to work well for gamers with short time slots to play in. As was our next entrant:

They ain't gentle worlds, that's for sure.

Savage Worlds

I already sang a bit of its praises yesterday¹, so there's no need to repeat myself here; let's just say that I ran a game in a pizza shop once²,  and after placing our order, we ran a pretty successful dungeon crawl by the time that we'd finished. People's character sheets went on 3x5 index cards, and I used my star wars maps and tokens that I had in my backpack for reasons³. If you want to combine procedural gameplay and short time frames, there's nothing else like it.

Caption included!

Feng Shui (1 or 2)

Look, it's ridiculous. And fun, and awesome, and empowering, and... look, if you enjoy Hong Kong-style action films, I've never seen anything do a better job of capturing their feel in an RPG. Its inherent setting is silly, but can be worked with. I also ran a 3-game run of Mass Effect: Citadel Confidential, in which the players were C-Sec officers, doing hardboiled detective stuff. It didn't take much adapting to get to work, and GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY is it fun to play and run. FS2 takes this even farther with its awesome laminated pregens (Kickstarter money well spent, I think), which work a little bit like PbtA playbooks. They're great for short-term games; pick someone who looks awesome, because they're probably awesome, and proceed to John Woo all over things.

Pretty rad.

Killing Time

Admittedly, this type of short, punchy game is something I've been missing since moving to the land of the deep immersion simulationists⁴; not that my local group wouldn't even be down for this kind of thing on occasion, but it's certainly not the default. Perhaps I'll try to get something going again.

And if I do, I guess I just gave myself some decent recommendations. But I'd happily accept any more; fire off in the comments if there's something you think I missed.

Game on!

~Killstring

* * *

1 - Yesterday meaning the 21st when I wrote this on the 22nd, not in my backlog publishing. So yesterday... from the future!

2 - The most excellent Rascal House in downtown Cleveland, back when they were attached to Peabody's. We had a little corner we used, and one of the managers was a big Pathfinder fan, so they were pretty cool with us geeking it up. It was also our #1 post-game stop, as when the student center closed, they'd be open for a goodly long time yet. :) Gods, I miss their feta and artichoke pizza.

3 - Good reasons!

4 - Michigan, I guess?