Midian Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Game
Playtest review by Mandy Bright
This is my review of the Midian game from Lost Souls Publishing. This is something of a walkthorough of my playtest experience with the game. I'm not a game designer or wannabe designer, and could care less about the mechanics except as they affect my game. I wanted to play this game for a change of pace. I wanted something different, but not so different that I couldn't get into it. I'm burned out on D&D, and don't really care for games that involve point buys (Storyteller, Gurps, etc.). Besides, I figured this way I can run a game, without worrying about the players knowing the system so much better than me that they try to shout me down. I'm the new girl in a bunch of close-knit gamers, so I don't get much pull when I run games they know back-n-forth.
First hurdle: getting other people to play. My friends fit into 4 categories: 1) those who only play White Wolf games, 2) those who don't seem to even know non-d20 games even exist, 3) those who when you mention "RPG" say "which console" or otherwise refuse to game, and 4) those who are willing (in theory) to play other games. It is this last group that I targeted. Unfortunately, most of group 4 either were playing in a live-action Werewolf game or a sick hybrid of d20 & Gurps. After a few weeks of vague promises to play, I got tired of the nonsense, and drove around town, picking up gamers in my van. After idle threats of play-or-die, I finally had enough to start a game.
During the drive, I handed out my printouts and told what I knew of the game world. I don't feel that there's enough of the world of Midian in the printed materials. I would have liked more about the countries, and something of a quick-start for the world. I know that there's almost nothing in D&D, and Palladium mostly shoves the world stuff in the back, so this is a common complaint for me. Since this is a world-specific game, I didn't have to make up my own world, but I wanted more detail. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Ravenloft & Dragonlance.
Second hurdle: creating characters. Anytime that you start a new campaign, especially with a new system, the first session is usually burned just in making characters. You always doubt and hope that there's at least a second session after. I made sure that this wasn't going to happen, I kept stressing that we would start play once the first character was done. I figured that people would want to jump in once the action started. This turned out to not be such a good idea. Everyone wanted to jump in with half-finished characters. Fortunately, most of them were on the equipment lists, and Midian makes this part easier. You just pick based on social standing & skills, instead of worrying over every penny. Plus there's the "munchkin kit" that is most of the things you buy anyway. Those I'd rounded up can knock out a character in a system they know in a few minutes. It took more like half an hour (granted, lots of talking) to make the characters.
Before the game, I printed up two full versions of the rules, and two more just character creation rules. It still took longer than I thought to make up characters. I've always said that longer creation time usually means better characters, so I took this as a mixed blessing. Two things seemed to slow the process down: 1) Midian uses a roll-then-choose method for Backgrounds & Traits (random roll then trade out a lmited few if you want). The discussions over what to keep & what to trade got a little involved. 2) No one left their original skill selection alone after hearing what someone else took. The skill section is pretty big (over 50 pages) so it's like making high level wizards in D&D & having to pick from the spell lists. It turns out that we had to turn to the skill section during play alot more than we did the combat section.
Third hurdle: starting the session. This wasn't really much of a hurdle at all. Everyone pretty much knew what kind of character everybody else was playing, since they talked while making them. I still had a motley assortment of characters to unite & get campaigning together. One of the nice things about Midian that I really liked is that the game helps with this starting out process. All the characters have default Backgrounds like "Never Left Town" so it was easier to tie them together if they're all from the same town. Those that were from another town, or another country, I tied in by comparing their Contacts (manditory part of the character) and "blooded" Backgrounds. Everyone was at worst a friend-of-a-friend or a distant relative. I wanted to have a "what's killing the cattle" mystery for the plot, and chose the one guy who rolled Upper Class to be the one losing his herd.
Since I started before everyone was finished getting equipped, they started out in town. This is OK, I wanted to see just how much Midian really supports the social game, like it claims. It went smoothly, without any more hitches or rules lookups than what you would expect from a new system (and a relatively inexperienced GM). Considering that we had just started, so nobody knew anyone in town even if they "knew" them, we had a blast just going about town & talking to each other & the locals. There's a number of little systems that Midian uses, but nothing big & overriding. I don't think I had to look in the Interaction chapter (where the social stuff is) except to look at statuses or dispositions for on-the-spot NPC's. I liked it that it kept the social part of the game mostly based on the social interaction between me & the players. There's Reputation, which is the percentage that someone has heard of you. It didn't come into play in the first session (beginning characters in their home town), but one of the guys stated his goal was to be a "hun'erd percenter" so the whole world would know who he was. There's Statuses, which are tied into Reputation (add the number of Statuses into the roll for Rep), but these are descriptive words that tell what thinks about your character. Some of the Statuses have other game effects, but mostly they're for Reputation rolls (and just fun descriptions). Contacts, like I said above, are manditory. Everybody knows somebody. This was something that the players had to adjust to, since D&D doesn't have anything like this, and White Wolf games treat Contacts like just another power. There isn't an alignment system, instead using Disposition for how to act, and open-ended Morals & Ethics for how characters feel about things. There also isn't a NPC Reaction Roll chart. I kind of like not being forced into how NPC's act, and I like that there aren't stereotypical alignments for the PC's to know & abuse. Unlike things like Reputation or Status, Skills are entirely voluntary, I don't have to worry about them until the players want to use a Skill or I have an NPC use one. Most of the social stuff is in the skills. Did I mention the skill system is BIG? There's social skills like Storytelling that don't have game mechanics, and social skills like Intimidation that do. I can handle that, no rules unless needed, got it. That works really well for the social stuff, but can get in the way of combat & magic. How does that work? Read on.
Fourth hurdle: our first combat. I'd played games with similar mechanics, so I didn't have a problem here. The players were all veteran gamers, so no one else had any major problems either. Like I mentioned earlier, there weren't many lookups in the combat chapter during fights, just lookups for skills. It wasn't any more than what I have to look up spells in other games, but I did start telling everyone "If you can't remember, write it down," when they would look something up for the second time. Midian treats magic & combat stuff as skills, so it's easy for anyone to pick up a few magic spells/skills, but there's not the same large amount of powerful magic that I'm used to in other games. There aren't any real limits on how many times you can cast a spell. If I ever get a chance to be a player, I'll probably play a swordswoman with a little bit of magic instead of a wizard who also knows how to use a sword. There aren't many systems where I would say that.
There isn't any automatic combat stuff, no BAB, no class-comparisons of bonuses, nothing. One of the guys didn't even have any combat skills. That kind of worked, since he was playing a sneaky pickpocket. Ironically, the guy who had the best skill with a sword was the Troll Syndic (kind of a lawyer-accountant-agent) since he had the "Experienced" background & could put more than three skill points into his axe. Combat went fast & fluid. It took us a couple rounds to get into it, but once we all started using the "descriptive combat bonuses" (to-hit bonuses if you say more than "I attack") then it got really fun. Since both the PC's & NPC's were using the same bonuses it balanced. The first fight went rapidly downhill for the NPC's because the PC's got a few early lucky shots. Between the high number of criticals (good & bad) and the shock penalties, the fight went alot faster (and deadlier) than what I had planned.
Fifth hurdle: ending the session. Midian characters recover fast. Damage heals pretty quickly, and most of the limited use stuff (like re-rolls from the "Lucky" Trait), you get back the next session or day. There's mention in the combat section about things like broken bones & stuff lasting longer, but there aren't any game mechanics to go along with that, just storytelling type suggestions. Doing Experience was interesting. You get according to how well you played instead of what you killed. You can even get more points for showing up on time, helping newer players, and stuff. I'm not sure I like mixing player actions to a character bonus (but it worked for "descriptive combat?") It makes perfect sense to me one way, but doesn't seem quite right another. It could just be that the whole second half of the Experience section seemed silly, things like points for bribing the GM. The first question asked when someone got second level (about half did the first game), was "How many skill points do I get?" Answer: none. If I read this right, the players "petition" the GM for things like skill bonuses. It makes the end of a session longer (or beginning if you give Experience then), but it I don't have to worry about little surprises like someone hoarding points. If you used a skill, and can convince me that you should be getting better, then you do improve. I like that. Players still get to improve in ways they want, but I still get to keep them reasonable.
vSixth hurdle: getting them to come back. Everyone certainly seemed to have fun. During the week when I talked to some of them, they wanted to talk about the game. They brought it up, that's cool. I had to play taxi driver again for some of them, but so far I got everyone to show up again for a second and third sessions. I like how my little campaign is going. Let's hope that this lasts.
The Good: It's different. It works as advertised, which is rare. It's mostly free, it only cost me paper & ink to print, and I can look at the web version free all I want. I can do things in Midian that other games don't allow. More importantly for me as a new GM, it encourages things that would be taboo in other games, like grey morality issues. There's alot of neat new things in this game, just reading it got my mind going. But the things that are there just make me want more of them.
The Bad: It's different. None of us in the first game really knew the system. We picked up on it fast enough, but there's always a learning curve with any new game. The game has its quirks, but they don't seem any worse than other systems, maybe less even. With combat being deadly, and character creation taking as long as it does, it helps to have a standby character. But I don't know if I like that, because some players may like the new one more, and kill off the old one. I want more world detail, more magic, just more of everything. There's lots there already, but it just makes me want more. Don't tease me like that.
The Ugly: It's different. I had to coerce my friends locally to play. Finding players online would be even harder. It's tough enough to find people to play great games like Amber, Besm, Herosystem, Gurps, Palladium, or Storyteller (Larp is way easier to find). Trying to convince someone to play something that they've probably never heard of is really hard.
Overall, I liked the game system. Once we get our little niche of the world carved out, we'll probably participate in the whole "Shared World" bit. For right now, I'm content to have a stable campaign with this alternative system.
Mandy Bright
