Review of The Riddle of Steel

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The Riddle of Steel (TROS)

After reading all the hype and the reviews, and spoken with the players, I had to throw my hat into the ring of this circus. Since there are so many reviews telling you everything about the game, this review will be a bit shorter, only lightly covering the book. First, let me say that I am 36 years old, came from a D&D background, but moved on to better things as time went by, because the D&D combat system just plain sucked. Well, enter TROS which had been building some reputation at having a great combat system. So I picked up a copy. I ran a game for four people for nearly 5 months before deciding that it just wasn’t for us. Here’s my group’s general feedback on the game. I’d call it more of a rant, but those of you that know of this game will need little explanation.

The game starts off telling about its attributes. Nothing complex here. You a d10 for each point in a stat, very much like most storytelling games. The difference here is that combat doesn’t work the same way as skills and stats do (I’ll get to this more later). The main issue I had with the book here was that it didn’t adequately discuss how to use Spiritual Attributes in the game. Such a huge dynamic should deserve its own chapter, or at least a page discussing how to use this creative process, but the author apparently believed that the SAs were as easy as pie to get. Well, I’m glad that I’m not the only one that didn’t get it at first. My entire group didn’t get it, and I see that others as well had issues. Supposedly, many are attracted to the game because of its combat, but stay playing because of the SAs. If this is the case, I suggest a full chapter on the topic is deserved.

Next, the book talks about its class system and how to build a character. I’m not really fond of allocating priorities for aspects of my character - I’d rather just have the points. However, the system works as it is, and does prevent some aspect of power gaming, though not by much. Also, it a little quirky because in other reviews I’ve read, they mentioned how a slave is better off than the knight, because he’ll have more points to spend. This is true, but I’m not sure how to fix that other than to give out equal points to everybody, and then who’s going to play the slave then? Anyway, if you have good role-players, this won’t be an issue.

Then the book discusses skills and advantages. I really thought the skill list should be bigger, and the skills more defined a tad, but I do like having skill bundles: Groups of skills that characters can purchase. This saves creation time, and helps to create balanced characters. For beginners, this is an excellent tool. For people that have played the game and know the short skill list, this becomes less useful. The advantages are pretty much a waste of space, and should either be redone and quadrupled in size or deleted completely. Naturally, characters typically only have one disad, maybe the author figured that would be enough. I’m a fan of the Hero/Gurps way of handling ads/disads, and even a fan of D20 Feats. But the ads/disads given in this book are almost embarrassing. For a game so heavily based off of story telling games, the author sure didn’t learn enough from their successes.

Combat is a large section of the book, and it should be. It was quickly apparent that the more you were familiar with the system, the better you would be at it, which is cool, but then a player brought up a good point. Why does my combat skills as a player matter to my character in combat? The answer is - it shouldn’t. This is a role-playing game, after all. My ability to use the combat system should have no bearing on my character’s ability to fight, but unfortunately, it matters a lot. To prove a point, one new player with a sword battled a more experienced one with just a dagger, and was trounced 5 out of 5 bouts, due to player skill alone. This was a surprise and major reason to take a closer look at this game. A larger complaint might have been the fact that unarmored fighters seemed to do a lot better than armored ones. The “naked dwarf” syndrome is a major aspect of combat. Characters with high toughness and no armor did better on average than those wearing heavy armor. What would be the point of getting armor? Seeing how valuable toughness can be, I can’t see going into combat without putting points into that stat. The other question we had was what if you wanted to fight a lizardman or a serpent? The initial book offers no way to combat anything that isn’t a human or an orc-like creature, basically. I run my campaigns more down to earth, so facing only human opponents was never a problem, but it did raise a good point. In most other games, it’s simple to create such beasts if needed, but with TROS, I can feel a headache coming whenever I think about it. I think to limit the game to only fighting humans was a mistake, as it will also limit the appeal to most gamers. The second book does have some rules for fighting creatures, but it’s too little, too late in my opinion, especially considering that the rules are so complex as to make creating creatures yourself a challenge. Also, the author developed the combat system outside the skill system, so when he got around to making this, the two do not match up. While not a big deal, I don’t see why combat skills are any different than any other skill, and I encourage game designers that they should develop their skill systems as much as anything else.

Magic was a source of major debate in our group. The magic system as it is is very powerful, and sorcerers can level towns with their might. This is only balanced by the fact that everyone hates magic and thinks of sorcerers as evil, and the fact that they have a good chance of aging whenever they cast spells. Well, in my opinion, I didn’t really care for the system at all, and thought the angle of having to create scientific explanations was just silly, something others apparently share with me. The main issue I’ve had with the system though is the lack of game balance. Sorcerers are way overpowered, and the only explanation given to us by the author is that Merlin (who sorcerers are based on) was powerful, too. Well, yes he was, but even Merlin didn’t start that way. Didn’t he have a tutor? Regardless, to say that every sorcerer begins life as a minor deity is just stupid and pointless. Even D&D has a better magic system than this. But from the point of game creating, why bother giving a type of character that much power, only to then try to create shackles to refrain them from using it? The combat system had a similar feel. You’re able to perform some cool maneuvers and all, but it’s so deadly, you really pick your fights carefully. To me, this kind of thinking is worthless, and I’ll never get it. I would rather give my players weaker powers and let them have fun with them as opposed to the latter of giving them godlike abilities or a super deadly combat system, and them punishing them if they use it.

Lastly, the book discusses the setting. Though not really described well at all, you do get a world of 40 some nations to play with. The main issue here is sort of like the aspect of trying to carry too many bags of gold from the ocean floor. If you get greedy, you‘ll drown. The nations are so many, and so poorly detailed as to make them nearly useless. I’d rather have 5 races to choose from and have them full of life and color. I suppose this is another example of the author not learning from his story telling past. Most games out there have only a handful of races/nations. This was done to ensure that the players/GM would not get overwhelmed, which is exactly what happens in TROS. Too many poorly detailed nations = confusion. In other aspects, the setting is poorly detailed as well, giving us hardly any information of current events, the mood, the history, religions, etc. I’m reminded somewhat of the D20 system which also shares its lack of setting detail. It doesn’t help that throughout the book, the lack of decent artwork. The drawings are horrible, and most of them do not help to depict the setting in any way. It’s a shame, because with some decent artwork, the 40 some odd regions could really come to life, but the pictures are so few and so bad, they don’t help at all, except in the rare instance.

The main point that we’ve discussed is the SAs. This appears to be the biggest point to buying this book that its players can bring up. But I’m not really impressed with them. At first, I was. I thought they were the best thing ever. However, it slowly dawned on my party and me that they really limit you. Instead of giving you something exciting, what the author has really done is tricked you into believing he’s giving you something that is already inherent in every other game system. The big selling point for this game I’ve heard is that the player can add dice whenever his SAs come into play, making combat meaningful, etc. etc. Well, excuse me, but is Spider-man only heroic when his Aunt May is captured by a villain? No way! Is Aragorn only heroic when he’s defending a hobbit? Heck no! Other game systems assume that because you are a hero, you are a hero ALL the time. TROS assumes you’re not a hero, except when your sister is in trouble, or when your arch nemesis arrives, or etc. This is utterly awkward thinking to me, and while the author intended to bring something new and different to the RPG world, he really only stripped away what everyone else was already doing, and then made it look like he was adding something new.

Lastly, GMs are required to design adventures using the SAs from their players. This is to enhance the game, and give some purpose to what the players are doing instead of the usual “well, you all meet in the tavern…”. But this, too, is screwy once you boil it down. What it’s saying is that you obviously can’t role-play, so we’re going to force you to role-play, and force the GM to create his world around your character, because he can’t create any decent meaningful stories on his own. I agree with the comments of others saying that I really prefer to create stories the old fashioned way. And unless you have sucky role-players, the whys and hows of everything are already worked out. As a player, I certainly don’t need the shackles of this system (or any system for that matter) to remind me of what’s important to my character. If I design my character right, I’ve already thought of that. While some may claim the difference is great, I don’t believe SAs are any more important in gaming than taking disads or an alignment elsewhere, and in fact, are nearly insulting by insinuating that I obviously need help role-playing, so here are some meaningless rules to keep you in line. It smacks of negative reinforcement, and it’s just plain ugly.

Anyway, this game system is very much like a Ferrari. Apparently, you will either love it, and never play anything else again, or you’ll want to avoid it like a bad rash. I personally found my group and me to be of the latter persuasion. We haven’t played since, and can’t be happier.