The Inside Scoop on Gaming

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"Imagination's Toybox" used to be the title of Uncle Bear (aka Berin Kinsman)'s website, until he decided to yank it last November and overhaul it for the New Year. It's also the title of his home-brewed universal/generic Cinematic RP system-thing. He'd been promising this thing for months, and I kept looking for it for months; finally, it showed up in, like, February or something. (Give him a break, he was busy.)

At first glance I was unimpressed.

But then, about...oh, I dunno, three, four days ago, I went back to the site and snagged a copy of the rules for myself. Looked over them. Learned. Thought. Tinkered.

And now I give you a tinkerer's "Damn!"

Okay, so, like, this game is TOTALLY easy. It's one of those free-form jobbies, sort of; if you put "Over The Edge", "FUDGE" and *drink* "STAR WARS" in a blender, you'd need a very big blender and you'd get a big mess of shredded paper. But you'd also have an approximation of the game philosophy in "Imagination's Toybox" (hereafter simply "Toybox").

It's cinematic in the sense that it emulates cinema and literature -- it gives story the upper hand over numbers and stuff. What game doesn't say that? "Toybox", however, goes one up.

THE NUMBERS MEAN NOTHING.

Well, yes they do. But, as Uncle Bear illustrates, the only difference between a guy with Strength-3 and a guy with Strength-7 is 4 points. You do use numbers, but they don't measure a whole lot of anything beyond, I guess, dramatic likelihood.

You probably want to know how it works so I'll get into that: The GM designs the setting and conventions of the game, and sets the characters at one of three power levels: Normal, Heroic or Super. These are called RANKINGS. He then assigns a number of character points, decided by him, based on his expectations of how 'powerful' characters should be. [Actually, by creating 'benchmark characters', averaging out their point costs, and deciing on an amount thereby.]

Next, players create a character by writing down at least the bare essentials of personality, etc., followed by a list of traits. Since there's no list of traits provided, the GM either suggests those which are available in the game world, or just lets the players go nuts and make stuff up.

Now, the players classify their chosen abilities as either Attributes, Skills, Perks, Drawbacks, Special Abilities or Package Deals, and use the character points to buy RATINGS -- a number between 1 and 10, defining how well the character can attempt something (read: 'dramatic likelihood'). Different kinds of traits cost different amounts of points, depending on their Ranking (Normal, Heroic or Super), but everything is in base 10 like metric, so it's OK. Plus, traits can be left unrated -- an unrated trait is more effective, actually, than none at all.

The 1-to-10 thing is a bit misleading; it really goes from 1 to 9. A '10' is a theoretical score, a kind of perfection. A Normal with an Agility of 10 doesn't have a Normal agility anymore -- it flips over to Heroic Agility-1. To resole tasks, you roll 2d6 for your actions, when appropriate; less than the Rating succeeds, more fails. Boxcars (two sixes) fail big, and -get this- rolling the Rating *exactly* is a critical success.

Pretty standard, right? Oh, boy, Jetson, check this out.

- Heroic characters succeed autmatically at Normal tasks. So if your Heroic character tries to lift a heavy log that might give a normal trouble, she does it right away. Likewise, Supers whack Heroic tasks with no sweat.

- You can roll Boxcars, failing big -- and STILL succeed. Maybe instead of disarming the bomb, you hit the button that makes the counter go wild....and it jams. Or something. It's a dice mechanic, one which involves subtracting 3d6 from 12. On a positive score less than your Rating, you succeed anyway, but not how you expected.

- Damage done is equal to your roll, but it's multiplied by the difference in scale between combatants: if a Heroic hits a Normal, he multiplies the roll by 10. If a Normal hits a Heroic, he multplies it by 0.10.

- Weapons have no damage codes. They have Rankings. A knife might be Normal (x1), a swell katana might be Heroic (x10), and a bazooka might weigh in at Super (x100). Indeed, it's suggested that *everything* can be described by a Ranking, but that isn't explained in the text. For shame!

- At character creation, you're as welcome to design a character who is a neophyte as you are to build one who's at the top of his game. This is mostly up to the GM, but it's a feature, not a bug.

- You could feasibly design and play Ben Stein.

"Hey, Dr. Rotwang!"

What?

"Is it perfect?"

No.

"Thought so."

I have a few bones with "Toybox". First (but not most important) is that an example of character creation is not provided; granted it's easy to make a character and figure it out yourself, but an example or two would've sweetened the process.

Also, part of me wants to say: "Why bother with the points values?" I've created a total of...let's see....11 characters so far: 3 for a cyberpunk/"Miami Vice" game, 5 for a fantasy game, 2 Hong Kong vice cops with cop-socky mayhem in mind, and Madmartigan from "Willow". 9 of them being ranked Heroic, they all came out at pretty differing point costs (the other was a Normal palace guard for use as a PC whipping boy). Sure, I averaged out each set, arriving at an easiy-asssigned number of points for PCs, but....feh, you know? I mean, why bother? I'd just as well chuck that if I feel wild enough.

Not to mention the hyperlink to a section entitled "Game Mastery", which leads to nothing....and consequently, to a Search page, the top of which always seems to feature a banner ad for "The Phantom Menace", depicting Darth Maul with no hood, holding his lightsaber up to whack ass in the hangar room in the Theed palace. That's cool. But he's no game mastery section. Plus, he gets cut in half. He was just an attack dog, anyway -- a long-range stick. Not a leader, like Vader....oh, crap, I'm off-topic.

The biggest problem, however, is that "Toybox" is really really flexible, but there are no examples of shpaes into which it can be bent; likewise, it is stated that "everything" can be Ranked....but there are no examples of how, outside of weapons. Again, this is easy to solve -- to a point. A Super vehicle moves 100 times faster than a Normal vehicle. A Heroic gem is worth 10% of a Super gem. Does this mean that your Heroic grandmother is ten times, umn...more...grandmotherly than my Normal one?

(Just kidding. My Granny's pretty Super.)

To Bear's credit, his game has a setting on the way; it's entitled "Knights of Torque and Recoil", and it makes me feel giddy 'cause it's a Doc Savage-y pulp thing with Art Deco and zeppelins and weird science and Nikola Tesla. One can assume that "KTR" will provide examples of "Toybox's" purported myriad uses -- but I want it NOW. And the updates aren't coming fast enough.

Then again, it's a good thing, maybe, to have all of this to play with by yourself; you can squeeze unexpected coolness out of it by virtue of your own creativity and intellect. Use them Monkey-Smarts!

"Imagination's Toybox", at www.unclebear.com. Get it....before it gets you.

In "Imagination's Toybox", no one can hear you scream.

....

....For Taste And More, it's "Imagination's Toybox".

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Imagination's Toybox
Author: Berin Kinsman, AKA Uncle bear Category: game Company/Publisher: Uncle Bear Line: "Imagination's Toybox" Cost: It's Free! Page count: 9, printed out. Capsule Review by Dr. Rotwang! on 04/04/00. Genre tags: Generic	I dunno any HTML tags. Wish I did, so I cold put spiffies in my reviews like all the veteran, respectable RPG.Net posters do...sigh "Imagination's Toybox" used to be the title of Uncle Bear (aka Berin Kinsman)'s website, until he decided to yank it last November and overhaul it for the New Year. It's also the title of his home-brewed universal/generic Cinematic RP system-thing. He'd been promising this thing for months, and I kept looking for it for months; finally, it showed up in, like, February or something. (Give him a break, he was busy.) At first glance I was unimpressed. But then, about...oh, I dunno, three, four days ago, I went back to the site and snagged a copy of the rules for myself. Looked over them. Learned. Thought. Tinkered. And now I give you a tinkerer's "Damn!" Okay, so, like, this game is TOTALLY easy. It's one of those free-form jobbies, sort of; if you put "Over The Edge", "FUDGE" and drink "STAR WARS" in a blender, you'd need a very big blender and you'd get a big mess of shredded paper. But you'd also have an approximation of the game philosophy in "Imagination's Toybox" (hereafter simply "Toybox"). It's cinematic in the sense that it emulates cinema and literature -- it gives story the upper hand over numbers and stuff. What game doesn't say that? "Toybox", however, goes one up. THE NUMBERS MEAN NOTHING. Well, yes they do. But, as Uncle Bear illustrates, the only difference between a guy with Strength-3 and a guy with Strength-7 is 4 points. You do use numbers, but they don't measure a whole lot of anything beyond, I guess, dramatic likelihood. You probably want to know how it works so I'll get into that: The GM designs the setting and conventions of the game, and sets the characters at one of three power levels: Normal, Heroic or Super. These are called RANKINGS. He then assigns a number of character points, decided by him, based on his expectations of how 'powerful' characters should be. [Actually, by creating 'benchmark characters', averaging out their point costs, and deciing on an amount thereby.] Next, players create a character by writing down at least the bare essentials of personality, etc., followed by a list of traits. Since there's no list of traits provided, the GM either suggests those which are available in the game world, or just lets the players go nuts and make stuff up. Now, the players classify their chosen abilities as either Attributes, Skills, Perks, Drawbacks, Special Abilities or Package Deals, and use the character points to buy RATINGS -- a number between 1 and 10, defining how well the character can attempt something (read: 'dramatic likelihood'). Different kinds of traits cost different amounts of points, depending on their Ranking (Normal, Heroic or Super), but everything is in base 10 like metric, so it's OK. Plus, traits can be left unrated -- an unrated trait is more effective, actually, than none at all. The 1-to-10 thing is a bit misleading; it really goes from 1 to 9. A '10' is a theoretical score, a kind of perfection. A Normal with an Agility of 10 doesn't have a Normal agility anymore -- it flips over to Heroic Agility-1. To resole tasks, you roll 2d6 for your actions, when appropriate; less than the Rating succeeds, more fails. Boxcars (two sixes) fail big, and -get this- rolling the Rating exactly is a critical success. Pretty standard, right? Oh, boy, Jetson, check this out. - Heroic characters succeed autmatically at Normal tasks. So if your Heroic character tries to lift a heavy log that might give a normal trouble, she does it right away. Likewise, Supers whack Heroic tasks with no sweat. - You can roll Boxcars, failing big -- and STILL succeed. Maybe instead of disarming the bomb, you hit the button that makes the counter go wild....and it jams. Or something. It's a dice mechanic, one which involves subtracting 3d6 from 12. On a positive score less than your Rating, you succeed anyway, but not how you expected. - Damage done is equal to your roll, but it's multiplied by the difference in scale between combatants: if a Heroic hits a Normal, he multiplies the roll by 10. If a Normal hits a Heroic, he multplies it by 0.10. - Weapons have no damage codes. They have Rankings. A knife might be Normal (x1), a swell katana might be Heroic (x10), and a bazooka might weigh in at Super (x100). Indeed, it's suggested that everything can be described by a Ranking, but that isn't explained in the text. For shame! - At character creation, you're as welcome to design a character who is a neophyte as you are to build one who's at the top of his game. This is mostly up to the GM, but it's a feature, not a bug. - You could feasibly design and play Ben Stein. "Hey, Dr. Rotwang!" What? "Is it perfect?" No. "Thought so." I have a few bones with "Toybox". First (but not most important) is that an example of character creation is not provided; granted it's easy to make a character and figure it out yourself, but an example or two would've sweetened the process. Also, part of me wants to say: "Why bother with the points values?" I've created a total of...let's see....11 characters so far: 3 for a cyberpunk/"Miami Vice" game, 5 for a fantasy game, 2 Hong Kong vice cops with cop-socky mayhem in mind, and Madmartigan from "Willow". 9 of them being ranked Heroic, they all came out at pretty differing point costs (the other was a Normal palace guard for use as a PC whipping boy). Sure, I averaged out each set, arriving at an easiy-asssigned number of points for PCs, but....feh, you know? I mean, why bother? I'd just as well chuck that if I feel wild enough. Not to mention the hyperlink to a section entitled "Game Mastery", which leads to nothing....and consequently, to a Search page, the top of which always seems to feature a banner ad for "The Phantom Menace", depicting Darth Maul with no hood, holding his lightsaber up to whack ass in the hangar room in the Theed palace. That's cool. But he's no game mastery section. Plus, he gets cut in half. He was just an attack dog, anyway -- a long-range stick. Not a leader, like Vader....oh, crap, I'm off-topic. The biggest problem, however, is that "Toybox" is really really flexible, but there are no examples of shpaes into which it can be bent; likewise, it is stated that "everything" can be Ranked....but there are no examples of how, outside of weapons. Again, this is easy to solve -- to a point. A Super vehicle moves 100 times faster than a Normal vehicle. A Heroic gem is worth 10% of a Super gem. Does this mean that your Heroic grandmother is ten times, umn...more...grandmotherly than my Normal one? (Just kidding. My Granny's pretty Super.) To Bear's credit, his game has a setting on the way; it's entitled "Knights of Torque and Recoil", and it makes me feel giddy 'cause it's a Doc Savage-y pulp thing with Art Deco and zeppelins and weird science and Nikola Tesla. One can assume that "KTR" will provide examples of "Toybox's" purported myriad uses -- but I want it NOW. And the updates aren't coming fast enough. Then again, it's a good thing, maybe, to have all of this to play with by yourself; you can squeeze unexpected coolness out of it by virtue of your own creativity and intellect. Use them Monkey-Smarts! "Imagination's Toybox", at www.unclebear.com. Get it....before it gets you. In "Imagination's Toybox", no one can hear you scream. .... ....For Taste And More, it's "Imagination's Toybox". Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)