Warlords and their mighty armies contest for the battered crowns of crumbling kingdoms, while in the steaming jungles necromancers scheme. Lovers from feuding clans meet and plight their troth under the pallid glow of an accursed moon. Welcome to the Shadow of Yesterday and the world of Near.
This is my first review for RPG.Net, based on five hours of play via IRC. Session notes, characters, and transcripts are available on the Shadow of Yesterday Wiki
Reviewer Bias
I admit it: I am a cheapskate, and that is why I love Anvilwerks Games. Anvilwerks, which is pretty much Clinton R. Nixon all by his lonesome, has released an electronic version of the Shadow of Yesterday for free under a Creative Commons license. This means you can edit it, print it out, bind it, and sell it yourself--though you should be polite and tell Anvilwerks about your plans. I have no idea if this makes financial sense for Anvilwerks, but it makes plenty of sense for me. I have spent plenty of money on games I never play--Nobilis, I'm looking at you!--so getting a great game for free is a fantastic deal. I am trying to make up for my cheapness by pimping the game vigorously.Anvilwerks does sell a hardcopy, illustrated version of the Shadow of Yesterday. Judging from the game's website, the artwork evokes a moody world in keeping with the game's emphasis on brooding, romantic fantasy. For those of you who hate reading off a computer screen, please shell out the money for hardcopy.
System
The Shadow of Yesterday's core mechanic relies on a 2d6 + (skill) roll; any result of 9+ is a success of some kind; in an opposed roll, the character with the higher level of success wins. Circumstances may influence this roll: you could, for example, receive X bonus dice, in which case you roll (2+X)d6 and take the two highest results; if you are burdened by Y penalty dice, you would roll (2+Y)d6 and take the two lowest.Characters have various "pools" to supply bonus dice. If you're engaged in a test of physical strength, you can drain your Vigor Pool for bonus dice, which represents gritting your teeth and straining with all your might. Players also have a special pool which can only be spent on other players' actions. You can bestow these Gift of Dice on any action that interests you. This fosters cooperation between players, and also leads to a neat narrative effect where really cool actions are more likely to succeed since other players will encourage you with Gift Dice.
Skills in the Shadow of Yesterday are pretty open-ended: there are thirty-two core skills, including Scrapping, Stealth, and Savoir-Faire, but it is assumed that participants will devise all kinds of special skills to suit their own games; the Setting segment includes customized skills like Demolitions and Bamboo Warrior.
Bringing Down the Pain
Even with bonus dice, players don't always get their way. When that happens, they can Bring Down the Pain. This is a sub-system of the game difficult to describe; essentially, it's an extended contest where the goal is to batter down your opponent. Harm in these contests is pretty abstract: it could mean actual physical harm, emotional trauma, political fallout, or anything imaginable. "Weapons" in these contests can range from a finely crafted sword to an exquisite lyrical poem, so long as it makes sense in the story. I feel like I'm botching this description; I invite you to check out the rules, but I'll try to summarize in the playtest part.Bringing Down the Pain can pretty much turn anything into high drama, but only if the players choose to initiate it. This means that the only contests that get this "zoom-in" special treatment are struggles where there's a lot on the line.
Chargen and Keys
I'm gonna gloss over this since it's pretty simple from a game mechanical point of view. First things first, devise a concept for your character; then distribute points among various pools and select certain skills. Each character gets a few Secrets--similar to D&D 3e's Feats. And they also get some Keys.Keys are the game's primary means of advancement. Players select or create keys that interest them; these Keys serve as motivations for the character. When the Keys arise in play the character gains experience points. So, if you have the Key of the Masochist, you gain 1 XP when abused, and 3 XP when beaten within an inch of your life. When a character defies these motivations--like if the masochist runs away from a source of physical or emotional pain--the player can choose to remove that key for a whopping 10 XP, usually enough to level up.
In practice the Key system gives you points for roleplaying your character concept. If you wanna play a coward, you perfect your cowardice through cowardly deeds. And if you roleplay a drastic sea-change in the character's motivation--i.e., sell off a Key--the game rewards you for roleplaying a dynamic, evolving personality.
Magic, Poisons and Specialists
The Shadow of Yesterday doesn't include magic in its core rules; they're meant to be setting-specific. The default setting, the World of Near, handles magic as a combination of skills and customized Secrets. With the Secret of Zu, for example, you gain knowledge of a mystical syllable which blesses those who hear it (i.e., confers a bonus die). The Secret of the Sorrowful Chord, meanwhile, is a form of bardic magic that manipulates the listeners' emotions. Similar secrets govern the brewing of mystical tinctures and poisonous concoctions.Between customized Secrets and skill sets, you end up with something much like D&D 3e's Prestige Classes but more open-ended. The default setting includes martial artists, word-priests of Zu, poisoners, magicians of the Three-Corner School, and jungle necromancers; you are encouraged to add more.
Setting
The Shadow of Yesterday includes a default setting, the World of Near, a post-apocalyptic fantasy land. Near was once an empire, but a cosmic cataclysm shattered the government; satraps and viceroys wage civil war over the ruins. In other parts of Near, mercantile houses have enslaved the pacifist Zaru tribes and abuse them horribly; in the jungles of Qek tribesmen defend their ancestral territory from zombies and jewel-thieves.Near is sketched in very lightly; this is a design feature, not a bug, which allows you to flesh out the world to suit your own campaign. Presumably supplements will provide detail and metaplot for those who need it. Overall, the setting material is sparse but effective, and suggests a very definite mood. It's a hard, bitter world full of red-blooded barbarians, scheming politicians, and star-crossed lovers.
Play Experience
Most of details of our game can be found on the Shadow of Yesterday wiki. Play went pretty smoothly, probably because the players understood the rules better than I did. A quick skim isn't really enough: the rules are brief but subtle.The Key experience system works pretty well. It's easy to put characters into a situation to play off their Keys, and it's easy to earn XP. The characters gained about two "advances" (levels) in five hours of play, but I was dishing out XP like Halloween candy to see how the system worked.
I was impressed with the use of Gift Dice during the game. Players had a consensus on what would be coolio and lavished gifts on each other to accomplish it. It created to a cooperative atmosphere among players, even when their characters were competing against each other.
Yet the granting of Gift Dice, and the spending of points from appropriate pools, causes a few complications for on-line play since it's hard to say when a roll is truly over. If a player gets a bad result, he can spend dice on it to get a better one--but if that stinks too, a second player might make a gift to keep the roll "in play". I sometimes found myself trying to adjudicate... only to retract as the situation changed. This is, however, due to the slower pace of IRC play and probably wouldn't arise on the tabletop.
Bringing Down the Pain is by far the most complicated part of the game. It's neat-o, but I got confused in a few spots and was lucky to have the creator on hand to explain it. Here are some examples of Bringing Down the Pain:
Duval the Tutor wanted to poison the wedding soup... but the head chef, Gascard, wouldn't let him. So Duval brought the pain for the Iron Chef Soup Battle. The two servants swore, shouted, and insulted each other's culinary prowess. In this first example, I discovered that Bringing the Pain should be done with some kind of literal or figurative weapon, since it takes a long, long time otherwise. Duval succeeded, but it was a slog. Still, it was fascinating to see a fairly mundane encounter become a scene of high drama: the player wanted it badly enough, so it became a key plot point in the story.
A second example: the sniveling goblin Pendejo taunts Duval, who tries to refrain from striking the beast. When Duval shrugs off the insults, Pendejo's player brings the pain for the M.C. Escher Battle, so named because Pendejo's player wants to be hurt. Duval gets infuriated, and Pendejo's player grants gift dice to Duval's player to wound the little goblin. Meanwhile the assassin Aloux shows up to hurt Pendejo too. Pendejo's player masterfully frittered away his opportunities to resist in order to accumulate experience: Pendejo has the Key of the Masochist, you see, and gains experience by having tutors castigate him and assassins mutilate him. This was an absolutely brilliant scene, but really twisted my head around as a Storyguide.
In the finale: Duval is locked in a sorcerous battle of the minds against an unholy torturer-priest, as Aloux tries to rescue a princess, Pendejo tries to feast on the priest's beating heart, and a wererat barbarian attempts to behead everybody in the room. Pain is brought to the Battle Where I Lose Ninety SAN Points. (Recommendation: if you ever run a five-way battle over IRC, resolve each action one at a time--rather than trying to do all at once with players draining their pools left and right. It gets confusing.)
This climactic fight was pretty cool: it ended up being a D&D-style party melee, with gift dice flying every which way and people depleting their pools to kill the evil priest. It turns out that I bungled the rules here a little bit and forgot to apply penalty dice to the Evil Priest for fighting off four enemies at once, and there was a bit of anticlimax when I insisted the players roll to behead him. Not narratively necessary, but rolling a coup de grace is part of the Pain rules.
The players seemed to have a good time. I enjoyed it very much. Fun was had by all. Huzzah!
Overview
Style: 2. The writing is entertaining and clear, but the web text is unillustrated and I found it awkard to hunt for stuff sometimes since some skills are in the Core Mechanics section and others are in the Setting material. Still, a free game trumps bland styling. The hardcopy is doubtlessly much prettier and perhaps better organized.Substance: 5. Anvilwerks had something very specific in mind here: a gothic fantasy world with plenty of room, combined with narrative-friendly mechanics. If that's what you're looking for, the Shadow of Yesterday is your game.
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