Quick review of the game system
Quick review of the game system
When there's a new RPG on the block claiming to do #Solarpunk, I'm obviously interested. Recently, @FullyAutomatedRPG@mstdn.games made its way to me via @fiction@slrpnk.net so I'm giving it a look. What does it want to do? It wants to be a kind of D&D for Solarpunk – a big kitchen sink game that...
A bit negative, but I kind of agree that combat should probably have less emphasis in a Solarpunk RPG. I remember from the old days that the Paranoia RPG had a similar situation where combat really wasn't the focus of the game, so they pretty much kept it out of the rulebook and left it to the game master to flesh out if needed.
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Recently, in other threads, we were talking about the history of solarpunk as a genre. I have this impression that what underpins it seems to vary a bit by where on the Internet you find it, and the majority politics of the people there. But I don't have much understanding of the philosophical underpinnings, and political movements that each flavor of solarpunk is derived from.
When I first got into this genre (after believing it was a sort of generic utopia thing based on the art for a few years) I started realizing there was a real movement with real answers to how we currently do things, and I started digging into all the alternatives presented by different communities here. And as I started worldbuilding for my own settings, I started looking at the source movements for alternatives to governments, state violence, prisons, etc.
I suspect that this space leans more anarchist and more on the punk scene than other solarpunk spaces but I don't know that for sure.
There seems to be a sizable contingent on the subreddit and on Mastodon who believe that violence is already too prevalent in our thinking so we just shouldn't talk about it, especially in solarpunk spaces. That doing so deprives us of practice thinking of alternatives. Maybe I'm too trapped in the world as it is to imagine a future where violence doesn't come up. But I want answers to violence that seem workable, and from the little bit I've seen, anarchy, communism, they're pretty blunt about the use of violence, probably because they're revolutionary political structures with some real world history. And the punk scene didn't kick out the Nazi punks by pretending they weren't there.
So I guess I'm kind of wondering where this streak of pacifism comes from, and how workable it really is. It was something that bugged me in the beginning of the book Walkaway, questions of what do you do when walking away from everything you've built, letting the aggressors have it, isn't enough to get you out of violence. What do you do when what they want is to hurt or kill you, or for your sexuality, your race, your gender, your beliefs to stop existing? The book actually has some creative answers later on, but I don't think it's a solved problem at this point.
Its a set of questions I've been generally kind of skittish of asking in the movement because I know it's not a popular one, but I'm interested in solarpunk as a roadmap, and I think we'll need good answers to this. I keep wanting to bring them to the Anarchism community but they already have so many academic resources available on there I always feel like I should read those first, then get bogged down in them.
Fully Automated is largely a setting without bigots trying to hurt people, without capitalism trying to crush and comodify competing systems. It doesn't provide answers for those fights. But a lot of the world building has been built around answering questions around fixing/replacing the justice system, and handling people who would hurt others if they could, with as little force as possible. I feel like it's perhaps a safe spot to start exploring some of those questions and looking for better solutions.
I don't think the critique is in inclusion of violence itself, but rather on how much space the mechanics for it take up in the rule book/character sheets and how that indirectly nudges players to seek violent solutions to problems.
My guess is that this is a "trap" of using an existing RPG rule book as a base, since most classical RPGs are rather combat simulators with "roleplay" bolted on top (the mentioned Paranoia RPG being one of the few notable exceptions).
@poVoq @JacobCoffinWrites Yes, it is a matter of weight. The website says that role-playing combat “doesn’t work. It’s completely subjective. It takes an incredibly skilled GM to make it interesting or coherent.” And I just think the same holds for social dynamics, economy, moral choice or research. But due to the history of how role playing games came about, often we have combat mechanics (they just seems like a must have for RPG), and rarely is there even advice for those other topics.
After reading your impressions a few times, I think I get what you're trying to say. Tell me if this is mostly right.
You disagree with my assessment that combat needs structure and social encounters don't. And with my belief that playing out a fight in the theater of the mind is hard, but playing out an interrogation or a search or a negotiation (etc.) using a free-form play styles is. Is that accurate?
For what it's worth, I think the impression that combat takes up a lot of space is misplaced. It's about 16 pages in a 200 page manual, and alongside a 140 page campaign book. It's not that much, imo.
@andrewrgross Pretty much! To be clear: I'm not saying that all of these need rules, but that trusting the GM/the group to make searches interesting, but not fights, is a massive design choice. Somebody mentioned that #FullyAutomated wants to be an OSR game. For that kind of game, “rules light outside fights” is totally a sensible&obvious design. So I guess I'm just very surprised overall that a Solarpunk game would want to go Old School instead of creating rules for new types of narratives.
I don't want this to seem like arguing, because I recognize the role that tastes play. But if you're curious, I can share our reasoning.
I saw elsewhere you mentioned Dialect, and I think that's a great example of a roleplaying game that radically innovates new kinds of narratives. I've played it, and it's an awesome game. So why didn't we try to do something like that, that totally breaks new ground? Why is this game so traditional?
The first reason is totally banal. The game was never invented deliberately. My friends and I just liked playing tabletop games, and we got into homebrewing a kind of non-dystopian version of cyberpunk, and after a few years decided that it was worth sharing. But I think this fits the themes of solarpunk, because repurposing existing materials for radical new purposes is a common practice, as is rediscovering and updating traditional techniques. Which I really think we did. Although the game is superficially familiar to people who've played DnD and Shadowrun and Cyberpunk, et al., there's a reason we didn't just use the existing d20 system or another extant system. There are, imo, a thousand little choices that add up to a fresh experience. The game, for instance, does a lot to make players aware of their characters' physical bodies, their friends and neighbors, and their connection to the natural world.
The second reason we were enthusiastic about creating an OSR-style game was that this is meant as an act of solarpunk evangelism. There are a lot of games which -- like Dialect -- are great works of art and design, but are not seeking a broad audience. This game is meant to entice newcomers as well as solarpunk diehards. It's assumed that in a group of friends, if one asks to play a solarpunk RPG, at least a few others will either not know what that is, or immediately imagine a complicated philosophical exercise. We really want everyone -- including people who aren't already active leftists -- to try this and like it enough to keep playing even before they understand that the game is trying to present new ideas to them. And this, I think, is the kind of game that new players will often try out.
I hope that helps.
That's a legit point, I'll admit I'd been thinking of other interactions like this one as well https://writing.exchange/@jacobcoffin/111006966154956384 in regards to the emphasis I've seen on avoiding violence as a subject and trying to disincentivise it through mechanics rather than setting.