Chatty's Review: Silvervine, Introduction
Shortly after I re-posted Greywulf’s ‘DM/GM requirements Specification’ for a RPG (called the Dungeonmaster’s Creed), I got an Email from John Arcadian who I knew as a longtime Treasure Tables Commenter.
Well after having read the Creed, John told me that he and a few collaborators, were working on a new RPG system called Silvervine that, they believe, addresses most of the points of the Creed. (oddly enough, based on the incoming links I’ve seen on this post, many designers think that way)
He invited me to take a playtest copy of the yet unfinished game and give them feedback on it. I obtained a copy of the quite sizable document (about 400 pages) and as soon as I started reading it, I knew I would have a various opinions, some of them quite strong, not all of them negative, about it all.
I e-mailed John back and asked him if I could break the review/opinion in several chunks and post them on the blog on a weekly basis. He gracefully agreed, provided that I point out that I was “reviewing the Advanced/Uncorrected/Playtesters copy that is by no means complete”
While I feel honored to have been asked by John to pitch in my 2 cents, I believe that this can be a win/win situation.
He gets free publicity and a series of pre-release reviews/opinions by an external person.
On my side, I get to practice my critical sense which, quite frankly, could gain a few more levels of objectivity seeing how Fanboyish my Pathfinder previews have been so far.
Now what exactly are my credentials here? I’m no industry expert as I’ve the never published anything gaming related except in local gamer rags and online. I have however been a DM/GM for most of the last 25 years. I’ve played, or read the following systems:
- D&D (Red Box, A D&D 1st and 2nd ED, D&D 3.x, Iron Heroes)
- Gurps (All 4 Editions)
- Paranoia 2nd ED
- Robotech and Rifts
- Mekton
- The Fuzion Engine
- Marvel Super Heroes 1st and 2nd ED
- BESM 2nd ED
This means that I know exactly what I like and dislike in rules and settings.
I also write rules for a living… just not game rules. I’m a Health Sciences Quality Assurance professional. I have been writing procedures, methods, protocols, reports and investigations for most of the last 8 years. I think I’m a fair writer and I know about the importance about clear unambiguous writing.
Finally, I like to believe that I have an open mind about games and that there is no one true Best System out there. All the non D&D games I’ve listed have, in my view, at least 1 thing better than D&D. It just happens that D&D is the one game that answers most of my current needs as a Gamer.
I am however going to enter this review with a bias. While we joke about it a lot here and on the forums, I am usually more interested in a Clever Crunchy system than a Clever Fluffy one. I’m also not a fan of Storytelling/Narrativist games and it seems to me that Silvervine is such a type of game from reading the 1st few pages.
Although I must say that the narrativist approach is just one of the 4 distinctive characteristics of the game. And some of them do capture my curiosity.
So, I will strive to focus on what brings me to want to read more of the rules and what makes me want to drop the book and move away. I’ll explain my gut reactions on each account. I also will try to say how I think the things I tend to dislike could be presented to alleviate my reaction.
Hopefully, if John and his crew want to make a game with the largest possible market, they’ll read what I say and take it into account.
I hope you’ll find interesting things to read in these posts, and if this experiment works, I’d be willing to tackle other such games (Indie or not) with pleasure.
Quick, Quiet, and Wild
Wizards of the Coast has given 4e anticipaters a holiday present in the form of the entire Elf entry from the Player’s Handbook. (And no, there’s nothing about them building toys.) There’s nothing terribly shocking to those of us who have been following all the 4e previews: there’s no penalty to stats anymore, just bonuses, Elves are more Wood Elfy (while the new Eladrin will be more High Elfy), no mention of a favored class, just some recommendations. We don’t have all the info needed to understand everything there- the Elven Accuracy power in particular- but it is an interesting look into THE FUTURE of Elfdom.
Critical Hits Gift Guide 2007: The Comics & Everything Else
We’ve covered the games, now here’s everything else that you might buy for the Critical Hitter who’s expecting a little something special this holiday season. We start with the comics, then move into a miscellaneous pile of stuff that we recommend you buy right away! [Read the rest of this article]
No post tonight… Wifey's Birthday!
Yeah my beautiful Half-Celestial wife Alexandra turns ## today (Yeah like I’d say that on the Web and expect to live).
The whole family is going to the restaurant tonight and I don’t think that going online to blog after the kids are in bed is going to make me a popular guy in the house. So in the interest of Male Survival and just plain decency, I shan’t post any RPG stuff tonight…
(It would really help my case if you could drop a happy birthday wish and reassure her that this Overlord buisness isin’t true!)
I will have a mini-post up tomorrow early in the afternoon right before I start the last preps for the game… Because I also happen to be the Daycare’s Santa tomorrow morning… Can you believe that I’ve been doing this for 5 years and my children never recognized me? I must have a wicked bonus in Disguise!
Adventure Prep: Finishing a Campaign Arc
This Friday is the year’s last game session. It also coincides with the last session of the Seed of Sehan campaign arc I adapted from Dungeon Magazine to Ptolus. See here for the whole Campaign so far…
As mentioned before, the game has been prepared for quite some time now and I’ve had time to tweak it beyond recognition… so I’m not going to do anything more on this.
So why do I bother to write an Adventure Prep post then? Well it so happens that one of the things I’d like to do better as a DM is endings and this session is such an ending.
Baring an unfortunate event, we should complete the Dungeon Crawl and the adventure within the first 2 hours of the session. The thing is, much like Stephen King, I have a ton of ideas and I can write up a storm at the drop of a hat. However, much like the Master of Maine terror, I tend to falter with endings.
In fact, if I’m as tired as I usually am and if I don’t actively plan some sort of closing scene to the evening, I know how it’s going to end:
“Well it’s 9h30 PM, you succeeded, good job. Okay who was tallying the loot? Franky? Let’s split that. Here’s the DMG and Magic Item Compendium, buy whatever you want…. Yes Franky I know Cixi can’t use Magic Items, you can go corrupt another young noble to your cause with it later on…”
Not all that cool and pretty Fluffless, huh?.
So what I need to do to make it end with a bang is to go for coolness. I need to build on the player’s growing fondness for Ptolus and put the spotlight on the heroics they just accomplished for the city. However, at the same time time I have to take into accounts that the level of player fatigue will be peaked, that being the last Friday before Christmas, and not create intense Role-Playing encounters if they don’t feel like it.
I also can’t drop the Hook for the next campaign arc… I tend to do that a lot and not let the characters some ‘me’ time…
What I think I need to go for is Tribute Plot Hooks. Prepare 2 or 3 potential scenes where Ptolus NPCs and organizations react favorably to the player’s actions and consecrate them as Bona Fide badasses. By making them hooks instead of scenes, I will give my players the control as to how they get their tributes. But how to choose those scenes?
(I am literally brainstorming as I write these lines, so sorry if it sounds a bit haphazard.. I’ll clean up during post publication edits)
Okay, so who in Ptolus gets affected if they successfully complete the Adventure and how does it affect them?
- Andach the graveyard-squatting druid gets a thorn removed from his side.
- The Keepers of the Veil, who have so much to lose, will save face and should be VERY grateful.
- The City’s Commissar, who sees yet another problem in his city solved
- The Balacazar Crime Syndicate (whom the players don’t really know about yet) saw its main competitors hit the dust in the Warrens. (Oh and since all the players, but Cixi are Good, I wonder how the PCs would react to a gift from the Syndicate… ).
Aside: I don’t know if the other DMs out there have this, but I think my players don’t really like to deal with Grey Zone characters/organizations. Whenever I present them with a villain or a morally ambiguous NPC that wants to deal with them, the best I can get from players is aloof tolerance bordering on incivility… At worse the NPC gets treated like dog turds.
Maybe it’s because the players feel that heroics should be more Black and White or at least have a clearer divide between friends and enemies. Maybe because players expect me to pull the ‘Screw you good guys!’ trope on them? Or maybe I just play them badly and I fail to communicate what it is I seek in such a scene.
Actually I have a question for my players… what would it take for you as a PC to respect an antagonistic NPC… or shouldn’t I ask that and remind myself that adversary NPCs are good for just one thing… Swordfodder! 
Anyhoo, I think I’ll write 1 paragraph on how each plans to give recognition to the characters in a flavorful way and let the players seek their own closure to this adventure.
Now to balance this list of potentially cool ‘thank you’ plot hooks, I’ll list those who aren’t all that happy with what happened:
- The Kill Raven Crime syndicate lost a whole district’s worth of activity.
- The Pactlords of the Quann (A non-humanoid league that aims at killing all humanoids) lost a powerful member (the Spriggan Souleater)
- The Knights of the Pale (Fiend hunters) , while happy that Good prevails, sees the opportunity to take over the Keepers of the Veil slip their grasp.
- The Vlaadam Noble house, through no fault of the PCs, failed to recover any Sehan… but Evil always blames others for its failures.
All this shapes the campaign’s backstory for the next part of the campaign… a foray in the Outer Planes!
Tune in next week for a special ‘Campaign Prep’ where I start talking about integrating Planescape in this Mish Mash game that is ours! I’m so looking forward to this… even if it means using an adventure written by my Nemesis!
Cya tomorrow…. (Edit: Woot 1005 comments and counting)
Toss another Halfling into the endzone!
Spotted this at BGN: next year, expect a PC version of my favorite Games Workshop game Blood Bowl, with an Xbox 360 version to follow later in the year. This is not the first computer version of BB, but it has been a while: the previous one ran on DOS. The article has this to say:
The races to be included in the game are Orcs, Goblins, Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Chaos and Lizard Men, and game play will have two modes: real-time for fast matches where reaction time is key, and turn-based to allow for more strategic play. A multi-player function will also be available so that leagues can be run and managed online.
Sadly, that means no Halfling team at release, so that we can’t recreate the heydays of the little guys being tossed by Treeman with the ball in their hands, then getting their groins sprained. Still, the ability to play in the two different modes sounds interesting, and an Orc team means that my Baltimork Boltz can finally return to the field. The official site has some more screenshots, and links to the company’s forum.
Nasty, filthy, Hobbitses
The story that’s popping up all over almost every blog I’ve read today: New Line has kissed Peter Jackson’s ass enough so that he’ll come back to executive produce The Hobbit and an unnamed sequel to The Hobbit. (My vote is for Hobbit 2: Electric Bugaloo) Jackson, however, is looking unlikely to actually direct the movies. Sam Raimi’s name is being tossed around, which after Spiderman 3, isn’t a name I’m so excited about anymore. (Of course, I doubt there’s any director I’ll be happy with that’s NOT Jackson.)
Still holding out for more money before agreeing to appear in the movie: the singing Dwarves.
Holiday Blog schedule, some Stats and Season's Wishes!
Yup, Christmas vacations are coming. I’m lucky to get a full week off work and I will enjoy it.
On the blog side, I’ve adopted a temporary daily Mini-post (500 words or less) strategy since last weekend and I plan to maintain it up until January 2nd or so. Of course, I’ll drop by with a DM log that chronicles next Friday’s game and I may break the 500 word self imposed limit whenever I feel like it.
I will also skip days when I have family parties and what not. Apart from that I’ll try to maintain the usual posting schedule (1 post per week day and at least 1 for the weekend).
Now in order to make this post a little more meaty, here’s a few statistical highlights on the closing 5th month of this here blog.
- Number of posts: 172
- Number of Comments: 981
- Number of Domain Page views since beginning of December (including Forum): 33701
- Number of unique visitors since beginning of December: 1117
- Number of Countries where 1 min+ hits generated: 29
- US state with highest readership: California… (Is it the Snow thing?)
- Feedburner Subscription: 85-90
Conclusion: What I started as an exercise in writing and Self-growth has become (and grows into) an amazing community. I really like how everyone that comments and participates has an open mind about RPGs and accept that while we all may play different games, differently, we all share the quest for fun.
I will therefore continue to do my thing here as it’s loads of fun. I am also working on a few cool future projects with some incredibly talented people stay tuned! (Alas, it’s not a Screen Cap Web comic… )
I also want to extend a very warm thanks to the silent readership that read me on Feeds or visit here once a day. While I haven’t gotten to know you yet, I am incredibly grateful for the time you take to read my musings.
I take this occasion to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I also embrace all non-christians with a wish for peace and happiness unto your families and friends. As for Fluff loving Role Players (My Nemesis included)…. well I also wish you to play the most Epic of tales! 
Hey, even an Evil Overlord can get the Holiday Spirit you know! (BTW, I’ve started playing City of Villains… so I get good practice)
If I could ask for a small holiday gift from you all is for you (even the silent ones) to drop in with a small holiday wish/hello/or geek gift list in the comments. Let’s knock that statistic well into the thousand.
Peace!
YouTube Tuesday: The Dark Knight Trailer
Unless you went out and saw I Am Legend over the weekend, you may not have seen the new Dark Knight trailer which is finally available online through you tube or via the movie / viral marketing website. If you go to the website you can see and download a higher quality version, or if you’re impatient just watch right now:
Heath Ledger’s performance looks like it is going to be spectacular, and my wife and I definitely picked up some hints of the dilemma that faces Batman about how not to kill such a psychophant. Definitely, at the very least, deserving of YouTube of the Week.
