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If you’re Greg Costikyan, on the other hand, your temper tantrums apparently frequently involve writing books.
Costikyan was one of the rising stars of RPG writing in the 1980’s. An exponent of playability and simplicity over complexity and realism in his best work, he produced some of the best games the field has ever seen, including the original Toon, the original d6 adaptation of Star Wars and the game he is best known for – the absurdist comedy/horror game Paranoia. Now he seems to emerge into the RPG filed only occasionally, making a good living in other areas, and only when he has some sort of a chip on his shoulder.
That is the only explanation I can think of for Violence: the Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed. A title which, if nothing else, shows he still has a good command of his vocabulary. The very first words of the text are “Welcome to Violence, You Degraded ****.” And somebody decided I needed to see a copy of this 1999 release from Hogshead Games’ now-defunct New Style line of RPGs.
I shall have to remember to thank them properly, once I can get my hands on some rotten eggs.
But, for the record, it is available as a free download from Costikyan’s website. So anyone can now get their paws on it, and it can be quite an amusing read in the right circumstances – I recommend very late at a sci-fi convention, while roaring drunk, with con security on hand in the event you do something really stupid.
Costikyan (who uses the pseudonym Designer X here, without actually bothering to conceal his true identity) was given 32 pages to make a game. What he made instead was a ferocious, foul-mouthed and graphic satire which poses the question “What would happen if the D&D dungeon-crawler ethos were applied to the real world?”. As you would expect, you get a nightmare scenario where wandering bands of looters roam the city, going into every building they see, killing the inhabitants (whether they are capable of fighting back or not), and taking their stuff. Costikyan, whose long bibliography of RPG work has never included a classical dungeon crawl, is clearly asking his reader “If that sort of behavior is contemptible in Manhattan, why the hell wouldn’t it be equally contemptible in Luclin?”
The ruleset provides information on all sorts of things related to the problem of turning people who are alive into people who are no longer alive. Weapons, combat styles, and the like are gone into in great detail for such a small volume. There are also a lot of rules on sex and drugs, although the drugs are of the illicit variety and the sex is far better not described at all. Trust me on this.
No explanation is offered as to why the PCs are doing all these things, mainly because any PC who would do this is the sort of person who is a walking advertisement for giving the police the power of summary execution (which they effectively have, as cops are simply additional targets who show up to get in your way and, by the time they become involved in your rampage, will have little interest in taking you alive anyway).
But then Costikyan pulls the really neat trick – in the process of creating a game no sane person would possibly want to play, he also creates one no sane person CAN play. Deliberately creating an unplayable RPG is a feat that only the most skilled can manage, because gamers are clever ducks who can usually find a way around even the most obtuse of rules given time and incentive. These rules include all sorts of little tricks that make play practically impossible, including the demand for dice whose existence is physically impossible (not only do d60s not exist – d60s can’t exist) and other assorted ways to frustrate anyone actually trying to run a game of this.
So what we have in Violence is essentially a rant against the traditional styles of D&D, MMORPGS, and the Grand Theft Auto series, written by a first-rate mind who is trying to simultaneously annoy, enrage and challenge the reader. As a game, Violence is of little value, and its author and publishers know it. But is useful as two other things: an insight into the mindset of one of the greats of this industry, and an indictment of a style of roleplaying that is far to endemic in the video-game age.
