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 My first look at The Riddle of Steel (RoS) was not very auspicious. For
some reason I took the Association of Renaissance Martial Artists' (ARMA)
seal of approval with tongue in cheek; I suppose I equated them with the SCA
or fat bearded guys with boffer sticks or something equally silly. Then I
took a look at the QuickStart rules available at their website (theriddleofsteel.net)
and realized that, for all its grit and blood, the system resolved
with remarkable smoothness and simplicity. The idea of being able to run
dire, Braveheart-esque combats nagged in the back of my mind until I
impulsively threw down the cash for it in October of '03. It's been quite a
discovery.
DISCLOSURE
I'm a roleplayer with a dozen years of experience, with systems ranging from
the dense crunch of Hero and GURPS to the airy minimalism of Nobilis and
Amber Diceless. My regular gaming group consists entirely of professional
improv performers (comedy and long-form). If we had to peg ourselves in Ron
Edwards' G/N/S paradigm, I'd say we were Narrativists who thought we were
Gamists - we want our characters to get cool things and accomplish their
in-game goals, but will often take a longer, more abstruse path to that goal
if it tells a better story.
I bought my copy of RoS at a local gaming store. I post from time to time
on the RoS boards at the Forge, using the same alias as I do here, but I'm
not what I'd call a "regular." I also did not run this review by anyone
there before posting it; I'm the only one who can, and should, take
responsibility for my opinions.
I review products by evaluating each of five categories of Substance and
Style, giving each category zero, one-half or one point. I then manipulate
the calculator a lot until it tells me the total score for Substance and
Style.
SUBSTANCE
Character Creation
Anyone who's used a Priority-based character creation system like Shadowrun
will be right at home with RoS. Assign priorities A through F to
Attributes, Proficiencies, Skills, Wealth, Magic or Race and Gifts/Flaws.
Attributes are your standard character traits, ranging from Strength and
Toughness to Mental Aptitude (a catch-all for learning capacity) and
Perception. Proficiencies are your combat skills, a pool of dice that you
can allocate to fighting styles like Sword and Shield, Polearm or Brawling.
Skills are done in a way that's gaining popularity with game designers -
instead of buying individual abilities, you buy skill "packets" (like
Swordsman or Laborer or Academic) that include a group of separate skills
underneath them. Wealth is social status and a set income, ranging from
recently-escaped Slave to the luxury of High Nobility. Magic/Race
incorporates two aspects in one, allowing you to choose whether you'll be
one of the Fey (elves/dwarves, as common as Faberge eggs in RoS), one of the
spell-wielding Gifted (see "Uniqueness," below), or a regular joe. Gifts
and Flaws lets you choose between combinations of Gifts and, er, Flaws. I
found this last part to be the weakest aspect of character creation. Most
systems that have "Gift/Flaw" options provide an extensive catalogue of
quirks and advantages to choose from, but the listing here was rather
sparse. It seems like an afterthought, and doesn't sit right with me.
Fortunately, it's easily removed (adjust the priorities to A through E and
remove the "Gifts/Flaws" category. Voila).
I like the notion of skill packets, mentioned above, and the way they speed
up character creation. Instead of spending time in second-guessing whether
or not to spend an extra point in Boating, you pick two skill sets, spend a
limited number of points to fine-tune the skills within them, and you're
good to go. Don't worry about lacking for options, either - a starting
character picks two different skill sets. With 14 packets, that's (14x13)
over one-hundred and eighty different skill options.
Character Creation: 1 point.
Task Resolution
The aforementioned skill system admittedly seems a little counterintuitive.
Your Skill rating is the TN you roll against with a number of d10s equal to
your Attribute, so lower Skills are better. It's not that big a deal, but
it was hard for my brain to wrap around at first.
The big discussion point in RoS, though, is the combat system. Any regular
on RPG.net or the Forge has probably heard a lot about the revolutionary
realism of RoS's combat engine. A few things to get out of the way first:
I tend to shy away from the term "realism" when applied to works of fiction,
movies or games - especially roleplaying games. The real world, the one
that you're in right now, has far too many rules to write down (efforts like
HYBRID notwithstanding). There will always be a certain degree of
hand-waving and detail-fudging in any simulation of action and consequence.
When people say "realistic," they don't mean "laden with detail" - if people
wanted a realistic swordfighting experience, they'd go down to the local
knife shop, put down a few hundred bucks, and come out swinging. Realistic
usually means "not heroic" - the main characters do not defy the odds, they
do not "sit in God's lap" to borrow the phrase, and they are better than
their antagonists only by virtue of skill or training. Consider, for
instance, realism as a genre in American fiction (the late 18th into early
19th century) - it was not more 'realistic' than romantic fiction, but more
depressing, grim and forboding, less prone to "happily ever after."
So the question, then, is not whether RoS's combat engine is more realistic
(is short, bloody combat "truer" than a protracted, acrobatic duel?), but
whether combat is more serious - whether the stakes are higher, whether
strategy is a higher priority than style, and whether injury is taken into
harsher account. The answer to all of those is a resounding YES.
Furthermore, it's done with more grace and fluidity than I would have
thought possible in a system with those goals.
Initiative is resolved by determining which of two duelists is attacking and
which is defending (there are rules for multiple opponents later). The
attacker selects from a pool of offensive maneuvers available to him based
on his Proficiency (someone wielding rapier and gauche can make a
double-attack, while sword and shield fighters might prefer a bind and
strike), while the defender does the same. Each allocates a number of
Combat Pool (CP) dice to the maneuver they've chosen and roll against a TN
based on the maneuver. The attacker, if he wins, either gains an advantage,
adjudicated by taking CP dice from the defender, or lands a hit. If the
defender wins, he may gain an advantage as well, also measured by the
transfer or loss of an opponent's CP dice, or simply avoids getting hit. In
either case, the winner of the exchange almost always takes the initiative:
a successful defense lets you become the attacker, while a successful attack
allows you to press the initiative. Once two Exchanges have passed, CP dice
refresh to their maximum.
Injuries are discrete quantities, not adjustments to some pool of hit
points. A wound is measured in Shock, Pain and Blood Loss. Shock is an
immediate loss to your CP, subtracted as soon as the hit lands. Pain is a
long-term loss to your CP, which plagues you after the round and the combat.
Blood Loss is a gradual bleeding that can sap your health and eventually
fatigue you into defeat. Very few combats end with someone bleeding slowly
to death; more often, a series of major hits accumulate enough Shock to
reduce an opponent's CP to zero, at which point the attacker has the luxury
of going for a difficult shot like a full-on thrust to the face.
The maneuvers are fairly detailed and rather thorough, but most of them tend
to resolve in the same way: every success you get over your opponent's roll
costs them a CP die (or two, in the case of aggressive maneuvers like Beat)
or gives you an extra CP die. By avoiding an unnecessary multiplication of
game mechanics, RoS makes it very easy for players to understand the
consequences of their tactics in combat.
All of the above lead to combats where fighters circle cautiously before
striking, where a single wound can turn the tide, and where only the rarest
battles last longer than ten seconds. This is intentional, it's "realistic"
(see my notes above), and it's bloody.
Task Resolution: 1 point.
Setting
The setting provided with RoS is nothing to write home about. There's a
smattering of pseudo-European Renaissance-era countries, with attribute and
skill bonuses that often seem arbitrary. Maybe it was layout, or art, or
just bland descriptive text, but none of the nations described really leapt
out and caught my eye as fascinating places to visit. I readily admit that
this may be personal preference rearing its subjective head, but I didn't
find anything original or interesting.
Setting: 1/2 point.
Uniqueness
A new RPG ought to have some unique aspect to its System, to justify the
cost and effort involved putting it on the market. The combat engine is
fascinating and refreshing, as I mentioned, and is worth the price of the
book alone. But don't overlook the magic system, either, which takes an
interesting view on the typical bearded sorceror.
Magic in RoS is not balanced. The game designers admit that, explicitly and
repeatedly, so GMs be warned. The cost of spellcasting - months off of a
sorceror's life, from one to a dozen or more - roughly matches the power
granted by spells. A "starting level" sorceror, fresh out of character
creation, could cast spells that could wrench a human's bones from their
skin, compel them to kill themselves or a loved one, or summon the most
powerful demons. There are no set "spells" per se: a sorceror has
Proficiency in a number of set effects that he can combine and manipulate to
create magic. The powers of Sculpture and Growth, for instance, could be
combined to transform a human into a frog.
This system creates wizards in the sense of Robert E. Howard stories: never
trusted, shut off from the rest of the world by their bizarre aging, and
capable of immense power ... but still vulnerable to a swordthrust. Magic
takes time above all else, and combat takes practically no time. A wizard
cannot go toe for toe with a blade-wielding barbarian, matching the other's
bastard sword with lightning bolts. He must instead be crafty, circumspect
and cunning to an extreme. If those are the kind of wizards you like, RoS
is perfect for you.
A final point worth noting, unrelated to magic, is the use of Spiritual
Attributes. These are the overarching concepts and ideals that drive your
character, like Faith, Passion, Destiny and even a little Luck. Anytime one
of your SAs comes up in play (you're on a quest for the woman you love,
representing your Passion attribute), you have the option of adding dice
from your SA to relevant rolls. This transforms combat, among other things,
from realistic to heroic, with a knight driven by True Love capable of
amazing feats. Also, any adventure that you spend pursuing an SA gives you
experience points: pursuit of your SA, in fact, is the only way to gain
experience. If used properly, these Attributes could create some of the
most player-centered campaigns that you've ever seen. The idea is simple,
but revolutionary in its scope.
Uniqueness: 1 point.
Adventures
Adventures included with the corebook are one of the best ways to see a
system's mechanics in action. RoS is remarkably deficient in this regard,
though that is perhaps a function of Spiritual Attributes in experience
awards. Since any adventure must center on the PCs, lest they earn no
experience, it's difficult to write a predetermined scenario and shoehorn
them into it. Regardless, a published adventure is de rigeur for a new
system, and RoS provides only rough skeletons.
Adventures: 1/2 point.
STYLE
Art
Here's where RoS's small press roots show, though "bleed through" might be
more appropriate. We start with the cover, featuring a dark scene of a
long-haired swordsman leaning over to hack viciously into something (an
unfortunate opponent) with a huge sword. Look at the cover for a bit. If
you don't have a copy of the book handy, you can check the website; it has
the same design. Give it a minute; it shouldn't take you long.
That's right - the barbarian's hand is backwards. He is pretty clearly facing towards the “camera,” as it were, making the visible arm his right arm. But that’s clearly his left hand. There's no way a human being could contort their hand in that direction. Even if they could,
there's no reason they would, if they're wielding a sword with any measure
of effectiveness. Errors in perspective and proportion can be forgiven
(maybe) in the interior, but on the cover? The first thing your target
audience sees? The hardback, full-color, glossy calling card to the rest of
the industry? And there's a GLARING error? That wouldn't pass in an
art-school elective, much less on something I'm supposed to pay money for.
The interior art doesn't stack up much better. I've seen comparable
drawings in the notebooks of quiet high-school students. In the same
medium, too, as most of the drawings are either poorly inked or perhaps
actual pencil sketches. The faces are cartoonish, the proportions are
amateur and, while I like hot elvish babes as much as the next geek, the
quantity of female nudity in the book struck me as a bit much. Some of the worst drawings I’ve ever seen in a published product, for instance, are on pgs 162, 142, 93, 84, and 60 – and that’s just flipping through the book at random. There are maybe two pictures which interest me enough to the point where I wonder what the character depicted is like - what his stats are, what his SAs might be, where in the setting of Weyrth he comes from, etc. The rest of the art is inexcusably poor.
Art: 0 points.
Layout
The layout needed work. Any RPG that introduces a whole new system needs a
clear, predictable layout so the new reader can follow along, reference back
and find sections easily. RoS isn't awful, but it falls short more than
once. The most glaring example is the chart for the order of a combat round
on page 73. This is probably one of the most important
things in the combat chapter, as it introduces the revolutionary
blow-by-blow exchange to the readers. The best place to put it would be on
its own page, or maybe on a quarter-page with useful and descriptive text
all around it. The absolute worst place to put it would be crammed under a
gigantic, unnecessary and sub-par picture of a confusing combat scene.
Guess which one the RoS designers picked (hint: it's not the good one).
The chapter headings and sub-headings smell a little of MS Word 101 (i.e.,
"take the font for the body text, increase it 10%, and bold it - voila, a
chapter heading!"). They don't exactly strike the eyes when skimming
through pages, looking for that key rule or example. Also, major
sub-headings are often started at the bottom of a page, with the bulk of the
text continuing on the next page, rather than giving it a page all its own: page 217 is a prime example.
Layout: 1/2 point.
Editing
Invisible, and therefore perfect. The occasional typo, but nothing that
distracted or obscured meaning.
Editing: 1 point.
Examples
Quite a few. Just about every stage of combat has an example accompanying
it (though perhaps these could be sidebarred or boxed off; see Layout,
above), and combat's where new players need the most guidance. Character
creation walks us through a sample character, and gives us some important
illustrations on how to pick Spiritual Attributes. The big hurdles had
plenty of coaching to accompany them, which is key.
Examples: 1 point.
Color
Color is the unique and memorable elements of a text, whether it's the dry,
ironic tone of a manual or the unique and imaginative setting elements. RoS
put forth some effort, but there's nothing terribly unique here. The game
designers put the most "voice" in the GM Tips chapter, where they lay give
such crucial suggestions as whose responsibility it is to provide food (not
the GM's), how best to arrange your dice (in bowls), and the most important
rule in gaming ("the GM is always right!", not "Have fun!" as I've been
misquoting for so many years). As you can tell, I don't think much of their
suggestions ... but they do make the designers' priorities very clear, so I
have to give them credit. At least I know where exactly the designers
stand, and can take a position Pro or Con, instead of having to try and
divine "founders' intent" from a few cryptic notes in the Acknowledgments.
Color: 1/2 point.
FINAL SCORES
Substance: 4 points
Style: 3 points.
CONCLUSIONS
RoS is about one edition away from being a top-notch product that’ll have a lifespan far beyond what anyone expects. Its indie-press roots are a little too prevalent, but that doesn’t obscure a genuinely original system for combat and character development.
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