Many RPGs out there as part of their worldbuilding establish in-universe rules and laws the player characters ought to obide by. But since those are separate from game and mechanical rules, their interpretation is often fuzzy. Do those laws exist as absolutes and GMs ought to be enforcing them, or are they meant to be broken and existing as something the PCs ought to fight against and win?
Since this topic seems to be cropping up in many RPGs, I figured it might be good to explore it!
Nobilis and the Windflower Law
Recently, our group has been talking about Nobilis, a game by Jenna Moran. One of the players wanted to have a Noble NPC be in love with another character, simple backstory building stuff. But then we were reminded by one particular passage in Nobilis, a law passed down from Lord Entropy, which simply states:
THE WINDFLOWER LAW: Thou shalt not love.
Which sparked a debate about whether that law is meant to be absolute, or something that adds to the drama of the game. Lord Entropy is the absolute ruler of Earth in Nobilis (and since the PCs will most likely play on Earth, they will be under his dominion), he laid down the Code Fidelitatis for Nobles to follow, so you'd think the players ought to follow them as absolute laws, right?
The brick walls are there to stop the OTHER people.
Which reading is correct, I can't say. I find Jenna's writing to be needlessly obtuse to the point I can't slog through the 300 page Nobilis, or the 400 page Glitch, or the 550 page Chuubo's, nor did I immerse myself in paratext about the game that might explain the meaning of such parts of the game.
World of Darkness, its Traditions and lawful stupid enforcement of them
An example of a similar topic that I have read and experienced much more of is the World of Darkness, and its Vampire Traditions, Mage Protocols, Werewolf Litany or whatever else might crop up in each specific gameline.
Each of those games has a set of rules that the societies the PCs are a part of follow and they keep the world in a stable state. But then when PCs come along and start going against those age old Traditions, what ought the GM do?
The nanosecond you break the Traditions the fun police get dispatched to get you
On one hand, since you have those Traditions, people put in place to enforce them and a good top-down pressure to use them to keep the newbies in-line, why wouldn't you make your supernatural society into the most authoritarian state out there where every transgression is instantly detected with the supernatural senses of Auspex (after all, why wouldn't everyone pat down your aura each time you enter Elysium?) and punished with execution.
Understandably though, this is the most boring, most player-vs-storyteller way to play the game. It's the lawful stupid of World of Darkness. Heck, Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition actually recognised it and finally added a textbox addressing it - "The Traditions are broken regularly enough that there’s a need for law, but not enough to break down vampire society or the veneer of the ordinary world that the Kindred hide behind. [...] The Traditions are deliberately designed so that vampires have motivation to break them, and so that there will be drama when they do.". Finally, a clear indicator that rules are meant to be broken!
Such direct, unambiguous communication is vital to letting the players and the GMs know how a game ought to be played so we don't end up with decades of party pooper NPCs in every campaign coming in to stop players from having fun breaking the rules.
Genre conventions and laws that improve the game
While we discussed times when in-universe laws were meant to be broken, there is also a flipside to this argument - rules that enforce genre conventions and improve the game.
An example of this would be Legen of the Five Rings' Bushido. Since that game is steeped in the samurai cinema and its romanticised view of the Japanese history, its bushido is inspired by its real-life counterpart. Since the players are expected to play honourable samurai, these rules exist to steer the players and their characters into how they are supposed to be playing.
Of course, even such genre conventions and rules can still be broken, but ought to be done with intention and good reason. After all, Forty-Seven Rōnin is a big cultural touchstone for just such a thing!
Sometimes the most honourable thing is to act dishonourably... for a time.
Similarly, you can have the drama that comes from such rules coming in conflict with one another, or the tragedy of having to uphold them in extreme situations. It would be a much different game after all if PCs decided to go and murder the emperor because they decided he's weak and they would be much better suited to rule Rokugan...
All of that is to say, sometimes in-universe rules are actually meant to be followed.
Conclusions
When you are writing an RPG book, pay close attention to what you are stating as norms of any given setting. Be explicit about the differences between the setting as it sees itself and the setting as it is in practice. Use an appropriate voice to communicate such intent and don't leave things ambiguous. Make your point clear in the same spot you state those societal norms - don't expect the players to read the entire book to see a correction elsewhere. Don't expect the readers to have any knowledge of any ofther paratext that is not explicitly called out and referenced. Your work needs to stand on its own and can't rely on any clarifications made outside of it. It is okay to be direct and blunt, it's okay to call on genre conventions, it's better to state the obvious than let something that is not obvious remain unstated.
I’ve spent the last few years listening through a few of the Exalted RPG Podcasts / Actual Plays and I figured I’d share my thoughts on them with you. There is a good deal one can learn from them, whether you’re making your own actual plays or just gaming in general.
There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.
First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.
Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.
Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biassed towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.
Fourthly, we hang out with the game’s GM, Brendon, and have made an Actual Play together and are working on another one. Heck, this very game was kind of inspired by our EvWoD game, Heaven for Everyone. While I aim to be impartial in my reviews, I might have an implicit bias. So take things with a grain of salt.
Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...
2) Overview and minor things
Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts is an Exalted vs World of Darkness actual play stream hosted by Brendon from @APairOfDiceLost. The game features a core cast of four PC Exalts of mixed splats, plus some cameos by a few more, being college age kids messing with the New York supernaturals.
The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast (you can find it on Podbean here, or on many other podcast hosting services), with each recording being edited down to 1 hour episode chunks.
The cast consists of casual RPG fans (so no voice actors or improv artists this time). A good chunk of the cast is new to World of Darkness and Exalted as well.
The campaign is mostly played by a core cast of mixed splat Exalts:
Cassandra Roller, aka Cas (f) - a Sidereal Chosen of Secrets curious investigator and gambler Lenard Van Zant, aka Lenny (m) - a Solar Dawn himbo southern conservative christian Oliver Jones, aka Liv (m) - a Daybreak Abyssal medical student Marcy Bartello, aka Marcy (f) - a Solar Zenith fighter
With others making an appearance on occasion:
Roswell “Nova” McArthur, aka Rose (f) - an Infernal pizzeria worker with an attitude Stargazer (m) - a Starmetal Alchemical getaway driver Roko’s Basilisk, aka Roko (m) - a Moonshadow Abyssal hacker
4) General Plot
The game starts with the characters being college students in New York, taking various classes together. Then they Exalt and start dealing with the local supernatural weirdness of the area as they try figuring out what they are. Eventually they start dealing with the World of Darkness Gehenna plot as they prepare to face off against an Antediluvian slumbering beneath the city.
5) Highlights
Introduction to Exalted and World of Darkness
To the shock of a few people that have heard of this, this game was apparently an introduction to both the World of Darkness and Exalted for a few of the players. Brendon the GM does bring a well prepared world for the new players to explore and enjoy the weirdness of the mashup. It is always enjoyable seeing people experience this strange setting for the first time.
The Wisconsin Adventure
Towards the end of the game the group decided to go to Wisconsin for various reasons, and a lot of that adventure has been a delight. By then the game has already gone from its early, down-to-earth concept of “Exalts in college” and embraced its wacky and over-the-top shenanigans.
The trip started with Lenard and Liv visiting Liv’s parents. We’ve seen a number of over the top parents already, so it was anyone’s bet what we would find in the home of an Abyssal mortuary student. And what we got were… a pair of very caring and supportive parents with quirky careers and hobbies, and a delightful Wisconsin accent to boot! Not only was the whole situation wholesome as fuck, when Liv asked for some old wax sculptures and animatronics his dad had in his storage (being a wax sculpture artist and so on) for his “project” (putting ghosts in them) and the player selected the “cowabunga” option, well, it was interesting seeing what project Liv’s dad worked on back in his day that was “The Avengers End Game” of their times…
Then the pair went on to try finding a master crafter Alchemical they heard lived around these parts that they met earlier. They were joking that he was Santa Claus and sure enough, they found him in Norway Wisconsin, complete with a giant factory full of robotic elves. They got to get some cool Artefacts for the whole team as a belated Christmass present so they can prepare for the big fight.
If that wasn’t enough, they also encountered a Rhinelander Hodag cryptid during their trip and decided to go all in with a whole side adventure of visiting its home and resolving a war between it and a raiding party of Sasquatches eager to kill the Hodag.
Overall, while it had some slow moments, the Wisconsin adventure had a lot of nice, memorable moments that were pretty fun as long as you don’t take things too seriously and enjoy the flow of where this game has gone to at this point.
The Elysium
During that Wisconsin adventure, the other half of the party, Cas and Marcy, paid a brief visit to the New York Elysium. That entire outing was really neat to behold.
You know how over time in RPGs, shows or the like various characters start having some long stories with one another and you can feel that there is a lot more depth to the situation than someone who just met them might realise? That’s how that visit felt - like the Exalts were stepping into a completely different story, one that has been going on for a while, and one that they won’t understand by just this brief interaction. Neither side knew what to expect from one another, everyone was tense, and in general this is what you hope a lot of vampire Elysium games would be.
The interactions themselves were fairly straightforward, Cas mostly warning the kindred about Tzimisce being about to awaken. Marcy had to avoid being turned into a refreshment after being left alone as a “ghoul” and delivering one poignant line at the Prince, who only allowed her a handful of words to speak. “Scale of Bangladesh” wiped out all the smirks off of the undead faces, since they heart rumours of what happened during The Week of Nightmares when Ravnos woke up.
I have yet to see any other EvWoD game make me wish for Exalts to try gently diving into the shark tank of vampire politics. Heaven for Everyone mostly powered through them in Los Angeles, City of the Bull God was mostly t-posing over the London vampires, asserting dominance, and the few other ongoing games I know of barely interact with them so far. I’m not sure if this feeling Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts evoked was just an illusion, or maybe a result of not sending the heavy hitters to the meeting where they would project their big dick energy and ruin the mood, but what we had here felt really interesting to me at least…
A big boss fight
With how much of heavy hitters Exalted are in the World of Darkness, you’d naturally want to end it with something cool, like a big boss fight. And this series delivered on that, if perhaps overdoing it a bit for its own good.
Since the series takes place in World of Darkness New York, those that know what’s going on in that place could guess the final boss - the antediluvian Tzimisce, one of the most dreadful things in that world.
Big boss time
The Exalts assaulted the Vampire to catch them unaware, fought through a number of their flesh monster minions, and eventually faced off against the perfected form of the creature themselves.
With a lot of legwork done ahead of time the fight was manageable (they managed to evacuate the entire area and bring a large pack of werewolves to help with damage control), but with this being Exalted vs World of Darkness, things eventually became a bit too big for the game format.
Three of the players had some form of protection against getting killed, but that meant the weakest link, Marcy, had to be rescued multiple times and burning through their resources. The battle itself took about 5 recorded hours and required two entire extra sessions to wrap. By the end of it, the crew was also running late and decided to wrap things up cinematically just to actually get to the end of it. The actual enemy stat blocks were eyeballed (since this came out before EvWoD Revised that had some guidelines for big boss fights) and rules had to be adjusted on the fly not to imbalance the whole encounter one way or the other. Some of the episodes as presented ended up being “and then they fought some more” and are kind of skippable (on my first viewing I accidentally missed one of the fight episodes and didn’t even notice).
The other Battle of New York
But in the end, it was a good way to wrap a series like this up, especially since it jumped the shark a long time ago and kept going further off the rails. For basically a first foray into a system that was a bit unbalanced at the time, it was pretty solid.
Pulling at the heartstrings
This game isn’t the first time some of those people played together, and Brendon had a good way of leveraging their shared play experience to tug on players’ heartstrings and make them feel things.
These ranged from rather innocuous things like referencing the other recorded campaigns (such as mentioning Mages making a van, or the Brightness Landing Hotel), but also their Exalted campaign we only got a retelling of. Some Artefacts the group was gifted towards the end of the game were referring to their old characters in a way that made Christina tear up a little. It was a nice touch and a good bit of extra work by the GM to really make things memorable for the players.
Therapeutic and making the world a better place
After you’re done listening to the series, there is a nice outro interview with the various players talking about the series and so on. One of those interviews is with Liv’s player, Tyler. In it, he mentions that playing that character helped him “in a way he didn't know he needed”. Moreover, playing Liv actually made him actually decide to go through with going to a nursing school.
So in the end, when all is said and done, no matter what else you have to say about the series, at least it made the world a slightly better place. It’s nice knowing that games have this kind of positive effect. Hats off to everyone involved!
6) Criticism
No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what the Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve…
A casual game of Exalted vs World of Darkness
Honestly, this whole game could be summed up as “casual”, both to its merit as well as detriment. The players aren’t voice actors, there isn’t any production team behind it, the various plots are picked up a bit ad hoc, sometimes the players are strung along a bit, some rules perhaps aren’t 100% there and so on and so on.
Which is fine, but at the same time, the game could’ve been so much better with some more focus, planning and pacing.
Like the game starts with characters being students. That relates to pretty much nothing in the whole plot besides them hanging out with ghosts in a clubhouse. There is a ghost comic book making clubhouse, which doesn’t do much beyond a small role in preparing for the final fight. There is a spirit of the City of New York projecting a giant rotting apple on the Empire States Building to show the corruption of the city as some kind of spiritual problem (implying vampires are somehow making them sick) which gets foreshadowed, a little explored, but not really resolved beyond fighting the big boss fight at the end which would improve the situation. The gang find a biblical seven headed Beast from a sarcophagus that erases itself from your memory that ends up being nothing more than a pet for a few scenes. Multiple families from multiple PCs are more wacky than the next and not all of them get their payoffs after they all get introduced in the same tacked on ending to a museum visit. A doom prepper uncle drags his niece PC into an open sewer manhole as a surprise hello only to die off-screen and be reincarnated as a Demon the Fallen spirit possesses his body and just chills with the PC twice before the game ends. The crew meets a character that is implied to be Santa Clauss that hires them for a museum heist and then just makes them some cool Artefact gifts for the final showdown.
This isn’t Riverdale level of crazy, but it certainly has a lot of ideas that you could fill a few seasons of a campaign with.
A completely normal Archie show, don't worry about it...
And like I should be complaining, we did some of that in our EvWoD Heaven for Everyone game. Sometimes you think you’re setting up something nice but the idea flops and characters latch onto something new. But that’s kind of what I mean by “a casual game” - it has ambition to do a lot, does some of it, and sometimes you just have to follow along a group deciding to hunt cryptids and decide the fate of battle between Sasquatches and Rhinelander Hodags.
Lenard - a southern christian bigot…
While I have nothing against Cody the player, and overall he seems like an okay person from all the games I’ve listened to from A Pair of Dice Lost, I didn’t like his character very much.
Lenard is a bit of a stereotypical southern US christian boy, which unfortunately came with its baggage of being a bigot. Straight up in the first episode during Introduction to Religion class he started with the spiel of “worshipping false idols”, and by episode 3 hearing that some NPC girl was German and speaking with a German accent he instantly called her a nazi. When he Exalted he believed himself to be an angel of god and so on and so on.
In general, I really hate these kinds of characters, the bible thumping holier-than-thou smug jingoist assholes, but sometimes they can serve an interesting part in a story. Like Kristen Applebees from Dimension 20’s Fantasy High had an equivalent similar background (although I don’t think she ever dropped any racism). Over the course of the story, however, it turned out that her family was actually a part of an extremist religious fundamentalist group, and she had to figure out her own path to be a better person than that. We never get anything like that with Lenard.
There isn’t even much pushback to what he’s spouting. The only one I’ve noticed was the german girl he insulted complaining to her friend, another PC, that she was called a nazi.
Take all that stuff away from that character though, and you still have a lot to work with. He is, as I think his player put it, a walking Lynyrd Skynyrd joke (due to his player noticing the name Van Zant in the EvWoD book and wanting to go with it), complete with a dog named Simple Man Freebird and last name Van Zant. He comes from a Dragonblooded family from Australia, has a bunch of sisters that enjoy fighting and loses the ability to read when he cusses, so to compensate he has eidetic memory. He has a giant spirit dog the size of Clifford The Big Red Dog that can talk and always has his back. You don’t need all that problematic stuff…
So many siloed sessions
The pacing of some episodes has been a little bit weird. A number of them would feature characters being siloed into their own scenes and adventures separate from the group. Every now and then that’s good, but sometimes it felt like a bit of a lost opportunity or something that sounded better on paper.
In Episode 18 the group got separated into different spirit rooms while going up the Empire State Building. Then the next episode and a half was them having their own scenes doing kind of random things from Cas having a job review with the Maidens of Fate to Liv operating on his old, dying self. And after spending like two-ish hours setting this up and going through this, those scenes didn’t really matter much and were just some random test by the spirit of the city to determine their worth? It kind of felt inconsequential for the time investment and not to mention like 12 separate cuts between the four vignettes.
Then by episode 24 the group decided to split up to do some prep. Liv and Lenard went to Wisconsin to find a master crafter to forge them some weapons and stop by Liv’s parents, while Cas and Marcy were having meetings with various supernaturals of the region to get them on their side for the upcoming big boss fight. They don’t meet back by mid-episode 29. So that’s 5 hours of content bouncing back and forth between two plots, about 26ish cuts (and mind you, each transition comes with a few second jingle, good for denoting context changes, a bit less so when you hear it 9 times in an hour ;) ). Don’t get me wrong, those episodes have some of the best scenes in the series (Liv’s parents and the Elysium), but one plot has minimal stakes (“travel to Norway, Wisconsin, ask for a favour”) while the other crams dealing with three big power brokers of the World of Darkness (Werewolves, Camarilla, and the Technocracy).
On one hand, I get doing that since basically only one character in the group was good at doing power brokerage (Cas), and bringing in Lenard to Elysium would’ve probably been a liability. On the other hand, things like this probably could’ve been paced as one off diversions during a session in between some group activities.
The siloing wasn’t so bad in the early episodes while we were establishing the various characters and their routines, or giving Marcy a bit of backstory before she joined the gang after Exalting (having individual scenes throughout episodes 4, 5 and 6 from a separately recorded session).
Probably in the end, things come down to pacing. Again, this is a casual game, so it is to be expected.
Marcy was just… there
Sometimes in a group ensemble you will have characters that don’t stand out, and unfortunately this time it was Marcy.
She was a Solar Zenith, although I had to do a double take on that since throughout most of the series she mostly acted as the second Dawn. She was introduced fighting a ghost, in the big split adventure part of the season she mostly played a plus one and bodyguard to a very motivated Cas, and besides that she was friends with Francesca, Cas’ rival.
She was a bit of a tracker, she had a cool uncle, drops one awesome line during the Elysium visit, and ends up being interested in cryptids. On the flip side she turned into a large liability during the final fight when everyone had to save her from being killed burning their “get out of jail free cards”, although at that point things didn’t matter all that much.
It is possible that if the character was a different splat or caste things would’ve worked out differently. An Eclipse would’ve complimented the group quite well and kept a lot of doors open (although Cas seems to have been doing most of the diplomacy, so it might be stepping on her toes), an Infernal or a Lunar would at least make the fights more distinct, etc.
But things like this happen, and I’m sure the group had plenty of fun with Marcy’s player being a part of the group and filling in for someone else that left really early.
Jumping the shark and going off the rails
The series was off to a bit of a slow start with the first ten episodes. The group had some run-ins with the local supernaturals, beat up some vampiric mafia, established a comic book making club with some ghost students and so on. Then things started getting turned up to 11 fairly fast.
The next Arc, Exalted’s Eleven, introduced a strange museum exhibit, featuring ancient plagues, a Daiklave hilt, some Alchemical soul gems and even a mysterious sarcophagus with something ancient inside of it (something about this does sound familiar…). Then the gang was hired to rob the museum along with some guest star Exalts and things continued to amp up. Lenard’s Australian Dragonblooded sisters appeared on the scene, a biblical seven headed serpent got freed, everyone had a trippy vision quest going up the Empire State Building, cryptids appeared, someone’s family member got turned into a Demon the Fallen character, and so on and so on.
Brendon the GM did later say that he went a bit overboard, one-upping himself over and over with each story in the system, and to an extent I have to agree. When you get ancient artefacts from a robot santa living in Norway, Wisconsin to save the Rhinelander Hodag from their mortal enemies, the Sasquatches, you probably start questioning how did you end up here.
It wasn’t an unpleasant journey all things considered, just not something you’d expect starting with the premise of “college age kids Exalting and being Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts”.
Railroading
While a lot of the game was off the rails with how bonkers it got, at the same time it did feature a bit of railroading. It wasn’t the bad kind of railroading where the players have no say in anything, but the kind where players often found themselves with a new situation out of their control and had to get through it.
The Empire State Building vignettes for example, were pretty much “you get dropped into this random scenario, how do you solve it” which didn’t have that much player input. Liv got to operate on his mortal self, with one decision - save them or kill them. Cas had an interview with the Maidens of Destiny that mostly amounted to just chatting, a little bewildered. Lenard got to save his buddy from being killed in some building. Nothing too engaging.
A less egregious situation happened in the Van Zant Manour, where the group got to lay low for a while after their heist. They mostly bounced off Lenard’s sisters a bit, and then got to talk with two more NPCs, pumping one of them for some exposition. This wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t two and a half episodes of this.
What followed for one group was similarly a bit on the rails. Lenard and Liv got to go visit Jotun to get some Artefact presents for everyone… For 4ish episodes. The only thing of note that happened was them running into the Hodag, which led to the Sasquatch fight later.
While this kind of play is fine for some groups and the players still had a good amount of input on what they wanted to pursue, it could’ve been a bit better. Then again, player-driven storytelling does require a good deal of inputs from the players and motivated characters, and since this was an introduction to World of Darkness for some people, it may not have worked out as well as you’d hope.
What is a “turn”?
Making mistakes while playing games is kind of expected. Everyone at the table has to juggle a lot of things on top of trying to remember the rules, so something is bound to crop up. However, this game seems to have embraced one crazy reading of the rules that made every late game encounter rather bonkers.
Sidereals have a Charm called Perfection of the Visionary Warrior. It’s a level 5 Battles Charm that is fairly simple, it merely says “Reflexively spend 1 Essence. At the end of every turn for the rest of the scene, the Sidereal may make an extra attack at her full dice pool.”. The key word there being “turn”. What is a turn in Old World of Darkness 20th anniversary editions? Good question, but one that you’ll be hard pressed to get a clear answer on in the various books. V20 doesn’t list it in its glossary. Some of the Storyteller systems use the term to refer to an action of an individual character, while others refer to one turn passing when everyone takes their action.
This game decided to take the first interpretation, meaning that you had the group’s Sidereal, Cas, doing an attack like 10 times a round. Every time anyone attacked, she would attack too, whether they were friend or foe. And all that for 1 Essence, which is barely anything in the system. The fights got a bit ridiculous with that, plus probably took a bit longer since Cas wasn’t the heaviest hitter in the group…
Lenard had a similar Charm, the Peony Blossom Technique, but that only gave him 5 extra attacks at the end of the turn for the cost of 3 Essence each time. Very strong, especially for a Dawn, but burning through your mote pool way way quicker.
Ultimately, would using the Charm as the developer intended change anything? I don’t really think so, the group had a lot of heavy hitters as it was so everyone they faced off against turned to red mist anyway. Was it a cool and over the top use of the Charm? Heck yes. However, the novelty of it didn’t really last too too long, eventually the fights mostly turned to same-y noise of stomping on the group’s enemies no matter who was in the lead, so whether it was Cas 5 times as often as anyone else it didn’t matter too much for the enjoyment of the game…
Imitation and flattery
If you’re like me and are keeping up with the various Exalted vs World of Darkness podcasts (there might be a dozen of us! A dozen!) when listening to this show you could notice some similarities to a certain other EvWoD production. Kids in school exalting together, a himbo of a Dawn, meddling with the local vampires, going on a museum tour only to later rob it, finding an ancient biblical serpent in a sarcophagus, doing callbacks to an older Exalted game, etc. happening twice in two EvWoD games would be a really strange coincidence. Then again, the group was heavily inspired by Princes of the Universe while playing their old Kings of Creation game as recapped under Let the Good Dice Roll.
But yes, as someone who played in Heaven for Everyone it was amusing to hear Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts have similar ideas. And you know what they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ;).
This is of course not to say that the show is entirely derivative, it puts its own spin on a lot of those ideas and the similarities are mainly what you notice in hindsight.
7) Conclusions
Overall, Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts is an okay series, but not my first pick for Exalted vs World of Darkness or Exalted in general. As mentioned before, it’s a fairly casual game, which comes with some issues you’d expect from that - plot points that go nowhere, others that overstay their welcome, a shift in focus midway through, etc. But that’s kind of expected from a casual podcast. All the players seem to have enjoyed the series, and it actually helped Tyler settle on a life direction, which is honestly more than you could’ve ever asked of a game like this.
If you’re looking for a stronger Exalted vs World of Darkness game, you’d probably want to check out City of the Bull God by the same GM (and I’m not only saying this because I got to play in that AP!). It features a cast that are Exalted and World of Darkness veterans, and has a somewhat more cohesive plot, even if it does take a detour to Hollow Earth to fight some nazis with cyber dinosaurs ;).
Recently our group had a discussion about the progression of earning new dots in Backgrounds in an Old World of Darkness campaign we've been playing. He's been trying to beef up security in his Dragon Nest (magical lair from EvWoD), bolster his Resources by robbing some ATMs and strengthen the bonds with his demonic advisor. But because all of these interactions have been rather subtle, neither the GM nor other players noticed this until it was brought up recently that these things haven't budged on his character sheet. Unlike everything else that can be bought with XP, this one part of the character sheet falls under "just roleplay it out and GM should award you some points", which falls under the unguided realm of "mother may I" which doesn't ever seem to be a good part of an RPG. Let's go over the problem in more detail.
Hey GM, is this enough for Resources 2?
What are Backgrounds?
Backgrounds, also sometimes called Merits, are parts of the character in the Storytelling System that are mostly extrinsic to the character. They are things like income, fame, people that work for you, how influential you are in the region, how powerful of a mentor is guiding you, etc. Unlike D&D, in the Storytelling System your character can start being a rich, influential political figure if you spend your points right, which can be pretty fun.
The problem is that in some of the Storytelling Systems, like Vampire the Masquerade after character creation raising existing or getting new Backgrounds cannot be done with XP, unlike everything else. Instead, they are raised as a consequence of the narrative and roleplaying.
While this isn't universal (Chronicles of Darkness let you buy any Merit with XP and Exalted lets you buy some Merits with XP), it can certainly be annoying.
Just roleplay it out!
I personally dislike any system that tells the players or the GM to just roleplay any broad part of the game out without any guidelines or rules. They always leave things wishy-washy and even if the GM wants to be conductive to the players advancing their things, it often feels arbitrary. How do you gaige of a player has sufficiently roleplayed becoming a millionaire to raise their income? How do you balance one player nagging the GM consistently to get those Backgrounds they want vs a player that is less forward about what they want? Should a player that can make money out of thin air just be given the money Background another player invested a good part of their starting character points into? If a player wants to roleplay getting some powerful artefact as a Background, should they just be allowed to? How do you roleplay learning Mandarin for five years if the in-game sessions happen day-to-day?
This is kind of like when character's social influence is left entirely to roleplay - the option is never as useful as the concrete option of violence. If you have the XP to up your proficiency in a skill like Melee, you as the player are in control of the character getting more competent and that has a tangible application on the session - your numbers go up, you are numerically better. You can't rely on having that same agency if your GM doesn't facilitate you getting the Backgrounds you want (even leaving aside some more hostile GMs that don't want you to get them, even well meaning GMs may forget to set the scene you need or you may fumble meeting a potential Mentor / Contact / Ally, etc.).
Just spend the XP!
Seeing how the New World of Darkness solved this issue in 2004, I'm surprised this approach hasn't been backported to the 20th anniversary edition in 2011. Just letting the players spend XP to buy points in Backgrounds would address this issue and give players the agency to push for their character improving things external to themselves. As always, you'd want to also tie the system into Sanctity of Merits (a system from Chronicles of Darkness where if you lose something you spent XP on, you get refunded that XP) not to make players lose their investments and feel bad about it.
Of course, one can argue whether or not some particular Backgrounds (such as Mentor, money, artefacts, etc.) should cost XP if sometimes players can happen upon them, but that's a bigger topic for another day...
When it comes to character progression in RPGs, you generally rely on two kinds of upgrades - boosts to stats, and new powers. The first one is simple, you get your +X to some rolls, HP or other things you need. These are your potatoes of the mix - a bit bland, but filling, they get the job done.
The second is a bit more complicated, with each power having its own little rule or condition attached to it. These are your Moves in Fellowship, Charms or even Merits in Exalted, or Foci in Stars Without Number. Those are the meat of things usually - something flavourful and interesting.
However, sometimes those powers are very bland, amounting to nothing more than a to-roll bonus under certain circumstances, essentially turning into conditional stat bonuses. It's important to keep this difference in mind when designing an RPG.
To illustrate this point a bit more, let's talk about some examples.
City of Mist - heavy on the stats
Our first kind of powers are essentially stat boosters - something that modifies some specific roll for your character. They can give flat bonuses to rolls, change the odds of a roll, give some conditional re-roll, or something to that effect.
Stars Without Number's Specialist Focus,
a good example of a bland power.
One of the more prominent examples of a game that is heavy on the stat powers that I've come across is City of Mist. It's a Powered by the Apocalypse game about being a super-powered person in a mysterious city. You build your character by choosing their themes (Mythos - magical powers, and Logos - mundane experiences) and picking power tags from those themes. For example, if you had a Divination Mythos, you could pick "Sense minute earth tremors" and "can hear a pin drop".
Power Tag questions and answers
Now, knowing that this is essentially a Powered by the Apocalypse game about being superheroes, one would expect the characters to have some cool, unique powers to play with. But no, most of the system is just the core moves everyone has access to. If you want to attack someone, you "Hit With All You've Got", roll your dice, and then add +1 for every tag that's appropriate. So if you have "fast as lightning", "predict a foe's next move", "see in complete darkness" and they apply to the situation, you roll with a +3.
The powers you have don't change what you can do, only reflavour how you do it. Someone with an Adaptation Mythos could throw lightnings, one with Mobility Mythos would strike fast, while one with Training Logos would punch them like a boxer, but the roll and the rules are the same in either case. Almost every power you get in the game is just a conditional +1 stat.
There are some other mechanics at play in the game of course, how if you specialise in one Move you can roll well and have some more interesting Dynamite effects, how your powers define who you are and if you neglect some aspects of yourself you get a replacement Mythos / Logos, etc. The core of the game, however, relies on powers that give you just stats.
Chronicles of Darkness - when quantity turns to quality
One asterisk that one could perhaps add to stat-heavy powers is that sometimes given a large enough shift in the stat, the game could feel vastly different. For example, in our Creepy Rashomon Marine Buffet game of Vampire the Requiem, my character had a Dynasty Membership Merit that let them become Tasked and give them an 8-again quality on rolls (basically - you could snowball your successes a lot easier, meaning you were more likely to get exceptional successes). This combined with some high dice pools meant that for a very specific goal my character turned into a hyper-focused, hyper-efficient machine akin to T-1000...
Nothing can stop a Tasked vampire! Exceptional success!
So eventually, given a power that shifts the probabilities of your rolls a lot, or otherwise helps your rolls a lot, even a bland stat boost power can feel amazing for a time.
Magic - mostly powers, few stats
While I couldn't think of a system that relies mostly on unique powers without much in the way of stats, one aspect of games that usually falls in this category is the magic system. Even in D&D a good number of spells each come with their own rules and special systems unique to that spell, and spells themselves take up about 1/3rd of the Player's Handbook.
Even a simple Alarm spell adds something unique to the game
Stats vs powers
So, on one hand of the spectrum we have bonuses to stats (numerical increases or other special but simple modifiers, rerolls, etc.), and on the other we have powers that each come with their unique rules attached. One is not better than the other, however.
Stat powers are easy to add and test. You can predict what changing a stat by +1 would do to a roll.
Powers that come with their own mechanic have to not only be tested by themselves, but also against and in combination with other mechanics and powers. Each is a special use case and an exception, possibly bloating the game (how many "harm someone" or "heal someone" spells do you really need?). Adding more and more special rules can also be a burden when you have to remember to use them, unless they are well segregated into their niches (you don't need to think about special hacking rules during a shootout, and your battle spells aren't needed during a conversation).
Ideally, you'd want a complimentary mix of both in your system - powers that rely on stats to perform better and better, and stats that are varied enough to cover the basic rules without having to resort to powers for everything. Chronicles of Darkness lines are a pretty good example of this.
One night before playing with our group, the GM and I had a discussion about Vampire the Requiem that made its way onto discussing the True Friend merit and what it implied.
For those that don't know, True Friend is a merit in Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition that gives the PC a person that they can truly trust. Someone that will under almost no circumstances betray them, one that cannot be killed by the GM for "plot reasons", etc.
While in itself it's a bit of an innocuous merit, its very existence seems to imply a thing or two about how some GMs might be treating their PCs and their relationships.
A lot of the design that went on between Vampire the Masquerade, Vampire the Requiem 1st edition and now the 2nd edition is focused on addressing various issues that came up from actual play. The systems did away with creating multi-splat characters (no more Abominations!), addressed minmaxing, heck, it even massaged out small niggles with things like Sanctity of Merits.
This implies that True Friend was probably a reaction to some GMs crossing the line a few times too many, stuffing PC's loved ones in the fridge or making them betray the PC for the sake of a twist that wasn't even a good story. This of course disproportionately targets players that have gone out of their way to build a backstory, fill it with people their character cares about, engage with the NPCs and get invested in them, etc. In other words - it mostly punishes people that might care to get the most invested in the world, vs "Joe the Orphan" that has no family, no one to care about, etc.
So here is my request to all GMs that care:
Talk with your players about potential boundaries and what are they comfortable with happening to their character. Some players might be on-board with being betrayed and stabbed in the back, but others won't.
Foster trust in your group. Respect what the players are putting forward, and talk with them if something doesn't fit - don't just kill off some player's NPC because they don't fit in with the story.
Be mindful when you aim to kill off or hurt NPCs important to the players. It might not sit well with everyone if they are not on-board with it.
Don't punish your players for getting invested in your story, your world and your NPCs. You want them to get invested, so you should reward that behaviour, not punish it.
Efficiency in a tabletop system is a nice thing to have. The more systems I try with my group, the more I'm bothered by rolls that don't affect the story on their own - either ones that you need to chain together, or ones that don't carry consequences with them.
Chain rolls
When my group started looking into playing some Exalted vs the World of Darkness, I started getting flashbacks to my old days of playing Vampire the Masquerade and the old mechanics that are still in that system. Of them, the most pertinent to our discussion today are the attack rolls.
To attack someone in Vampire the Masquerade, you roll your Dexterity and say, Melee. If you succeed, you take however many successes over 1 you got, add your Strength and the damage of the weapon you are using, and roll that again. That is the amount of damage you do. Now the enemy makes their soak roll and subtracts the successes from your attack roll. So you roll three times in order to get the result you want (you can also start adding the cost-benefit analysis of various manoeuvres like "if I strafe with my assault weapon and get +10 to hit but +2 difficulty, is that a net gain for me?" but let's keep it simple...).
Now, let's compare that to Vampire the Requiem. You roll Strength + Melee - your opponent's Defence. The amount of successes you roll is how much damage you do. Done. In one roll you accomplish everything you used to in three rolls.
This type of rule design can really speed up how you resolve each action in combat without lowering the depth of character builds. You can still make glass cannons, soak tank and what have you.
Try, try again
A thief walks up to a lock. They roll to pick the lock, and they fail. They roll again, and they fail. Someone else from the party decides to give that same lock a try, they roll, and they fail. Then the thief rolls again, succeeds and the party moves on.
A lot of you could probably think back to something like this happening in your game, probably even the exact same scenario. It's an example of a roll that's not impactful if you fail it. Sure, if you only had one chance to pick that lock, that would be something, but if you're picking a lock that's the only way through to continue your adventure, failure is not really an option.
There are two ways of addressing this issue - either ignore the roll entirely if the characters are skilled and equipped enough for it to not be a challenge, or think of some meaningful consequences for failed rolls.
The first approach can be found for example in the Vampire the Masquerade games - if your dice pool for a roll exceeds the difficulty of the roll, you automatically succeed at the roll (under certain conditions). Even if your system doesn't support it, you can usually tell when some roll is beneath your player's character - just roll with the fiction and move on.
The second approach is very prominent in the Powered by the Apocalypse systems like Fellowship. Each time you fail a roll, either there are set consequences to be had, or the GM can use Cuts against you. Maybe they'll "Show signs of an approaching threat" - you made noise and attracted the guards to your location, or "Use up or take away their resources" - your lock pics gear breaks and now you have to batter the door down, etc.
At any rate, you want the roll to be important, whether it succeeds or fails. If it's not important, it's not necessary.
Conclusions
If you can help it, try making every roll in your game be meaningful and impactful. Sure, sometimes it's fun to ace a roll you're really good at, but you can just as easily narrate how awesome you are when you auto succeed. Try giving your rolls weight for failure beyond "nothing changes" - that outcome is the most boring of them all.
When it comes to RPG books, there appear to be four distinct styles to the writing, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. It's good to keep those voices in mind when writing your books.
The In-Universe Voice
The first voice is the voice that's the voice of someone living within the universe of your game. This can take the form of dialogue, diaries, notes, in-universe advertisements, etc. Often, this is reserved for fluff text or intro fiction.
If you want to see a book heavily leaning on the In-Universe Voice, check out Secrets of the Covenants from Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition. It's about 85% written using that voice (even if it features a plethora of individual characters and writing styles):
Long exposition writing, short scribbled notes, extra tangent side-note, this book has it all!
While this voice can be interesting for establishing the mood of a setting or telling a story, it's not very concise and rarely if ever to the point. Add in the possibility of an unreliable narrator and you can be left extrapolating what is true about a setting, and what is true only from a certain perspective.
The Academic Voice
The second voice in RPG writing is the Academic Voice - a voice of someone compiling a large amount of information to present it in a compact, factual and approachable way. This does away with a lot of fluff while delivering the same information you could've gleaned from the In-Universe Voice in much smaller word count.
For example, here is an excerpt from The Invictus (Vampire the Requiem 1st edition):
The writing is straight and to the point. Everything is presented as facts, no personal opinions, no narration or "talk-like" text. It can be presented as something existing within the universe of the game, but more often than not it will be an outsider's perspective viewing the whole picture.
While the Academic Voice can be a bit dry, it's probably the most effective way of conveying all kinds of information to your reader.
If you want to have a good comparison of the differences between The In-Universe Voice and The Academic Voice, compare Vampire the Requiem 1st and 2nd editions. They are explaining similar concepts but in a much different way, and while I really dig 2nd edition's mechanical changes, I despise it for overusing the In-Universe Voice. Heck, I bought Secrets of the Covenants for the 15% of it that is mechanics and threw away the 85% that was fluff I'd rather read in the 1st edition Covenant books...
The Technical Manual Voice
The third voice is the Technical Manual Voice. It's used when you convey the game mechanics to the reader. You do away with the fiction and roll out dice, tables, numbers and so on. This voice is used to explain how things work on the mechanical level.
The writing in this Voice is technical and can get to the point of making your eyes glaze over, but it's the only way of conveying the mechanics of how the game works.
The Meta Voice
The final Voice of RPG Writing is the Meta Voice. At the end of the day when you peel off all the fiction, all the descriptions and all of the mechanics you are left with what is implied - a frank conversation between the game writer and you, the reader. While this voice is rarely used in books, when used correctly, it can convey the most amount of meaning with the highest clarity. You are no longer covering what you mean with layers of depth, but instead say exactly what you mean.
Perhaps the best example of this I've seen was in Ravenloft Reincarnated, a fan conversion of Ravenloft into Savage Worlds by Jeremy Puckett:
Talking directly to you, the fans of the setting
Laying the themes and tropes of the setting bare
The Meta Voice is perhaps the only way to clearly talk about the game directly, rather than trying to imply themes and ideas. It's a way for the author of the book to directly turn to the camera and convey what they had in mind when they were writing the book. When used sparingly, it can add the sometimes much needed clarity to what's being described and assure the reader that certain choices were made intentionally.
Comparison
To reiterate the points mentioned and directly contrast the ideas, here is a simple comparison of the same concept described in the four Voices.
The In-Universe Voice:
"You're wondering why that gal recoiled from your touch? Well, that's because you're a walking corpse - room temperature at best. HA! But don't worry, there is a trick for that. First, you have to get your old ticker going. CPR it with your muscles, then concentrate to get the blood burning up inside of you. Then, you have to dilate your capillaries to spread that love around. Give it a few minutes and you should be good to go. Just remember to keep pumping it - you're no longer on automatic."
The Academic Voice:
"Vampires can use Blood to appear more human through the use of Blush of Life. This makes their bodies life-like and warm to the touch."
The Technical Manual Voice:
"Vampires can use 1 Blood Point to activate the Blush of Life. This allows them to pass for humans and negates the usual -2 penalty of social interactions imposed by their corpse-like appearance."
The Meta Voice:
"Blush of Life has been introduced to proof it against silly things like vampire hunters using thermal imaging to pick out vampires from the crowds, vampires having to resort to carrying around heated blankets to keep themselves warm and constantly applying a tonne of make-up just to appear human. This is to make the game focus more on character interactions rather than figuring out the physics of keeping your undead body at 37 degrees Celsius..."
Conclusions
There are four different Voices when it comes to writing RPG books, each with their own application, strength and weaknesses. Figuring out the balance between those voices is important.
Use the In-Universe Voice when you want to convey the fiction and add some character to the writing. Use the Academic Voice when you want to convey a lot of information clearly. Use the Technical Manual Voice when it's time to talk about the mechanics of the game, and use the Meta Voice when you need to convey big ideas and meta-information directly to the reader.
Keep in mind that your readers might have a preference between the In-Universe Voice and the Academic Voice - some people will dig 200 pages of fluff, while others will resent you for it...
While the newer and newer editions often change the games in big ways, sometimes even the small tweaks and changes can leave a good impression on you. Today I'd like to discuss a few of such things I noticed first reading Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition.
Sanctity of Merits
In pretty much every White Wolf game, a character has a pool of Merits / Backgrounds / etc. - resources at their disposal that are not necessarily a part of their character. Their money, influence, retainers, etc. In the Old World of Darkness product line, you could purchase them at character creation and then boost them through roleplay. In the New World of Darkness / Chronicles of Darkness, however, you would increase those Merits with XP, just like you'd boost any of your other stats.
This created a small issue. If you spend a hefty amount of XP hiring a high-end Retainer and they happen to die, you felt that blow quite hard. I personally remember that exact scenario happening to one of my characters during an ongoing LARP game, which set me back a few months of XP - not a great thing to be on the receiving end of...
VtR2E had a neat solution for this exact scenario - the concept of Sanctity of Merits. It's a rule printed at the start of the Merit chapter of the book that essentially states "if a character looses a Merit, they get the XP that merit is worth back". While it's a simple change, it makes a lot of sense from a game feel perspective - you are no longer as worried about using your Merits in a risky way, and mechanics that could cost you those Merits are not as harsh.
Obviously, you still have the narrative incentive not to throw your butlers into the meat grinder, and you can't just buy back the Merit without a narrative justification, but at least when your Retainer sacrifices their life to save you, you'll mourn them, instead of the XP they cost you.
Traditions are meant to be broken
Vampiric Traditions have been a staple of the Vampire line of games since its inception AFAIK. They are the basic set of rules to follow in any Vampiric society - "don't break the Masquerade", "don't create too many Vampires", etc.
Maybe it was just me, but for a long while the Traditions were presented as these nigh-immutable laws that would get you into a heap of trouble if you broke them, and no vampire that wanted to keep their unlife would dare to go against them.
VtM Bloodlines intro - break the rules, get the axe
VtR2E once again put their neat spin on that. Right next to the section talking about the Traditions, there is a small box stating what was a small revelation to me - "The Traditions are broken regularly enough that there’s a need for law, but not enough to break down vampire society or the veneer of the ordinary world that the Kindred hide behind. [...] The Traditions are deliberately designed so that vampires have motivation to break them, and so that there will be drama when they do.".
This was an interesting take on things. The rules are meant to be and are broken. It's not an uncommon thing, and since it would be problematic to go around executing Vampires for every transgression, the punishments are not meant to be so dire.
This opens up a very interesting political play - the rule breaker either has to hide the transgressions, or if they come to light, act very apologetic and penitent, to let the judicator carry out the theatre of justice lest they are to be seen as weak. If carried out correctly, the justice appears upheld, and it's up to the political manoeuvring to dictate if something was gained from this. This is much more interesting than "break the rules, get the stake"...
Humanity is about being human
Humanity, another staple of the Vampire games, is a measurement of how "human" the character are. The more horrible things you do, the lower your Humanity gets and the more of a monster your character is.
For a long while, the Humanity stat was revolving around being, well, "a law-abiding person" - don't steal, don't murder, don't hurt people, etc. It was pretty bland, and in the Old World of Darkness, the situation was a bit worse thanks to Roads. A Road was an alternative morality track, mostly introduced to let the more monstrous Vampires of that setting be playable. Road of the Serpent for example was all about hedonism and corrupting mortals, while Road of Metamorphosis was all about fleshcraft.
Vampire the Requiem 1st edition did away with all of the Roads essentially since they often boiled down to "Road of whatever I wanted to do anyways" and Vampires once again would only have Humanity, forcing them to balance their personal horror of slipping and becoming a monster.
The Humanity rules were still a bit bland though:
Vampire the Requiem 1st Edition Humanity
Luckily, VtR2E gave them an interesting spin:
Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition Humanity
Now, Humanity wasn't just about "not breaking the law", but also about being human, such as interacting with humans (and thus having to relate to them and deal with possible consequences of being a monster), as well as the "mental" consequence living through things humans weren't meant to live through, such as joining a Vampiric society, using your supernatural powers, etc.
These additional things the Vampire characters are supposed to look out for help to highlight how they might struggle to maintain the semblance of being human. This reminds me of a short scene from Interview with the Vampire where Louis and Lestat would pretend-dine with Lestat's mortal father for the company.
Conclusions
Sometimes even small changes and clarifications to game's mechanics or lore can make a large difference to how the game is played. Removing a small pain point, highlighting something that perhaps could've been missed, or adding extra focus on a narrative mechanic can be quite memorable, even if they appear insignificant at first.
My group and I play a lot of RPGs. While some groups prefer to stick to traditional printed books and paper character sheets, we are pretty comfortable all sitting on our laptops, have our Google Drive character sheets open and a PDF of the rulebook handy. Unfortunately, we have seen our share of bad PDF rulebooks out there, which can make the process of running a game all the more frustrating. Below are some of our gripes and nitpicks around various PDFs we had to deal with over the years.
A number of the examples below may come off a bit harsh especially against small, self-published RPGs. This article is not meant to be an attack against anyone, or a criticism of the RPGs themselves, but it merely uses various RPG PDFs as an example of various mistakes you can make. Most of the RPGs used as examples are things we really enjoy playing - hence why we notice those problems in the first place - by being exposed to them through regular play. With that out of the way...
Good Index is important
First thing that is a must for a PDF or physical books is the Index. When you need to search a 300 something book to find a section explaining a specific topic, you naturally check the Index. Well, it seems that some people may have forgotten that. For example - Mage the Awakening 2nd Edition, a book with almost 100 pages of spells, released their PDF without an Index. Good luck finding Sympathetic Names out of the blue if you don't remember them being described under Space Arcanum.
Luckily, the second version of the PDF did come with an Index. It wasn't Bookmarked, but at least it was there. And it was a pretty exhaustive Index too, listing all the important pages something is discussed and highlighting the primary definition of something:
Now, if you want to earn your final brownie points for a good Index, look at what Broken Worlds did and hyperlink every page number, so that you can click on it and be taken straight into that page. Really solid work!
Speaking of Broken Worlds...
Hyperlink your PDF
This one might take some extra effort, but it is REALLY nice to have - hyperlinks everywhere. Whenever you refer to a specific concept, rule, power, spell or anything that has rules attached to it, make it a hyperlink. It really helps with navigating the PDF. At least do it for key concepts.
Broken Worlds does this pretty well. Take this part of the page from Character Creation section:
It links you to the Train Move, as well as rules for damage, armour, wounds and stamina. The PDF is pretty good when it comes to linking the core rules you might be interested in while reading certain sections and it really works.
Make your PDF copy friendly
Obviously, when you have a PDF, you will want to be able to copy parts of it for your own reference. I personally like making my own character sheets that have a copy of all the relevant powers my character has access to. There are a few things that make the process harder unfortunately.
Have a look at this Elven power from Fellowship playbook PDF
Looks pretty simple, has some bolds, italics and so on, but should be a simple thing to copy, right? Well, this is how it looks when you actually try to copy it:
enchanting performance (grace)
When you perform an Elven art for an attentive
audienceL roll (GraceE On a 10KL you may Forge a Bond with
as many audience members as you6d likeE The Bond should
relate to how much they adore and appreciate youE On a 7U9L
you may only Forge a Bond with a single listenerE On a 6UL no
one caresE
For some reason, every non-alphanumerical character is a special character or something. This means you have to manually correct anything you copy as some sort of copy protection mechanism or something. Luckily, this sort of thing is quite rare (although I have a bad luck with headers / power names...).
Other than that, you have a small issue of the power name being all lowercase, and then using hard breaks on every line rather than making the PDF format itself. The latter means if you want to make something into an actual paragraph, you have to delete every newline and add a space instead. Can get a bit tedious on bigger chunks of text.
But that's generally something you have to deal with infrequently, now let's talk about probably our favourite pet peeve - Bookmarks!
Bookmarks are important!
Having a good Index is crucial for having a good, accessible book. Having Bookmarks is crucial for having a good PDF. There are so many ways we have seen Bookmarks messed up it's not even funny. So let's start going over some things one by one.
So first, here is what you'd ideally see when you first open up the Bookmarks bar:
Clear, top-level categories, everything collapsed and visible on one page. You can instantly tell where to look. This would be an ideal version, but this example comes from Stars Without Number Revised, which has a few problems with its Bookmarks.
First of all, you shouldn't ever Bookmark trife. For example, the PDF has bookmarks to individual Backgrounds (which are irrelevant once you make your character) and individual Foci (which are only relevant during levelling up). Things that are so small you can fit 8 of them on a single page, yet you devote Bookmark real estate to each of them individually:
On top of that, that neat, top-level set of Bookmarks is all open when you load the PDF up, meaning this is what you see every time:
So if you want to use those Bookmarks, you have to devote a few extra clicks on closing the categories down one by one.
On a similar note, the same publisher has released Lexicon of the Throne which had some new problem with its Bookmarks:
Where some items in the Bookmarks turned into categories (Birds, Cities and Dance should be on the same level, but they aren't).
As nit-picky I might be about Sine Nomine while still enjoying it, at least the Bookmarks themselves are generally readable and usable. The same can't be said for Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd Edition:
First of all, the custom colour scheme looks awful in Acrobat Reader under dark mode. Something you'd expect a fair number of people to be using, but apparently nobody checked against. Similarly, the book itself uses flowery chapter names, which are pretty useless when it comes to quick navigation. Where would you look for character creation rules? "A Wolf I Am"? Wrong! That's where the lore is. "Laws of the Kill" is where you have those rules. Now you open up that tab and what do you see?
Sections like the Soul, Body and Spirit of the Wolf. What do those reference? Soul of the Wolf talks about the basic character concepts, creating your character and the pack. Body of the Wolf talks about various tricks you can do and transformations. Spirit of the Wolf describes various powers you have, Triggers is a half-page panel in the middle of the previous section, and Spirit Magic talks about even more powers you have but of a different variety. In general, a lot of flowery language that doesn't tell you much beyond a hint of what's present.
Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition suffers from similar mistakes, except they also bookmarked the fiction that comes between all of the chapters:
Honestly, looking at the various PDFs we used in our games recently, I think Broken Worlds hits the mark again with a pretty decent set of Bookmarks that aren't immediately a mess when you open the PDF:
They tend to unfurl a bit on the lower levels, but it's still better than a lot of the other examples used (especially a few systems that didn't bother putting in any Bookmarks at all).
Quick reference rules
Explaining rules in detail is fine, but when you play the same game over and over, you only want to have some quick reference rules. So either offer some free / low cost GM screen with all of the core rules on it, or at the very least stick a few extra pages at the end of the book with only the core rules and dice modifiers. For example, Mage did it pretty well with their Spellcasting Quick Reference:
While we're at it...
While we're talking nitpicks, here are some other, small tips to keep in mind when creating the PDF / book as a whole:
Avoid homonyms. In The Veil you can pierce the veil to gain information from the Veil. First veil is the name of the game, second is a phrase for a Move, third is the in-universe name for the Internet. You wonder how many times "veil" is used in the book? A lot. Good luck finding the correct information if you want to know about anything besides talking about what you can do in The Veil the game.
Be unambiguous. Again in The Veil, you have a Playbook The Dying that is dying from a disease.
The Disease's symptoms progress and will eventually kill the Dying (Prognosis). The Dying Special allows you to spend hold to keep the symptoms at bay when the Disease triggers. Now, does that refer to the things under the Prognosis section, or the move Trigger? Initially when we played, we thought it was the former, but turns it was the latter. Generally, when you use some common words for names of powers or moves, you should make them distinct - make them bold, or use capital letters. "when your disease would trigger" is ambiguous, "when your Disease would Trigger" is less so. Fellowship is pretty good at this in comparison.
Offer low-weight PDFs. Sometimes all you care for in a PDF is being able to quickly flip through it on your phone. It would be useful to have some low-weight PDFs for that reason, and they could double as printer-friendly PDFs.
Conclusions
Offering a high-quality PDF experience can mean a lot of work, but in the end you will be saving your players a lot time and effort. So please, if you can, put the effort in to make the lives of us players that use PDFs a little less grating.
