{"id":17894,"date":"2012-02-05T14:00:41","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T20:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=17894"},"modified":"2012-02-04T21:09:17","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T03:09:17","slug":"under-the-hood-picture-book-roleplaying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=17894","title":{"rendered":"Under the Hood – Picture Book Roleplaying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Picture Book Roleplaying<\/strong>
\nBy The Warden<\/em><\/p>\n

Slipping under the radar has been perhaps one of the most anticipated and equally undervalued release of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0from Margaret Weis Productions. Considering the healthy combination of superheroes, roleplaying, and Marvel Comics, I was expecting a huge gasp of anticipation (or at least bigger than what I\u2019ve seen thus far) but there is definitely a keen audience awaiting next month\u2019s release of Marvel\u2019s latest RPG. Including myself.<\/p>\n

Built on the Cortex Plus system used in previous fan favorites such as the Serenity RPG<\/em><\/strong> and the Smallville RPG<\/em><\/strong>, it does stray from the standard concept as a truly story and character driven game with motivation and bond playing as heavy a role as power and strength would in previous conceptions. While this may cause some initial shrugs from younger fans, those of us who grew up with Marvel for decades \u2013 though I must admit it\u2019s been decades since I last read comics regularly \u2013 regarded them as detailed character driven stories featuring super-powered individuals and teams. Spiderman\u2019s popularity stems more from his never-ending quest to balance his costumed identity with his personal life to mixed results. My preferred title was the old West Coast Avengers<\/em> series and can remember the Back In Time storyline where the Avengers were sent back in time with a machine which could only go backwards. What made the plot unique was Mockingbird\u2019s subplot: trapped in the Wild West while the remaining Avengers headed for Ancient Egypt, she became brainwashed into falling in love with a western superhero (whose name I can\u2019t remember \u2013 curse my dad for selling all my old comics!) and eventually taking the ultimate revenge by killing him\u2026 a major taboo in the Avengers.<\/p>\n

But I digress, because that\u2019s not what I\u2019m here to talk about today. On Wednesday, MWP released the third preview of the Marvel RPG<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0demonstrating the book\u2019s presentation and a basic overview of the dice mechanic. After my initial impression of the layout and presentation, I was struck by an unexpected result bringing me to today\u2019s topic: how pictures are used to explain rules.<\/p>\n

Then Vs. Now Vs. Later
\n<\/strong>The early days of tabletop RPGs were fraught with budget restrictions and a heavy dosage of text, likely enhancing the nerd stereotype of roleplayers as each book appeared to be a glorified text book with more demonic pictures. While this presentation may have been a conscious choice by the original designers, they were also facilitated by the budgetary restrictions of the time, particularly art and printing costs.<\/p>\n

Forty years later, the technology exists for even the smallest publisher and independent designer to beef up their presentation with full-color PDFs, print on demand, and desktop publishing. The changes to the publishing market have been so dramatic as to threaten the feasibility of traditional publishing and the rise of ebooks. Who knows what publishing will be like in ten years as technology such as tablets allow publishers to provide more than just text, but animation, sound, and more within their publications.<\/p>\n

More Than Just Text<\/strong>
\nGoing back to the Marvel Heroic RPG<\/em><\/strong>, take a look at this sample from the third page of the preview:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On its own, the text does explain how dice and Plot Points are used to determine success. The diagrams, however, are the icing on the cake and everyone loves icing. It clarifies the text without requiring endless examples and room for misinterpretation. More importantly, the diagrams speed up the learning process to allow the reader to get to the meat of the book \u2013 playing the damn thing! \u2013 faster without hiccups. Think about how much additional space would be required to review samples of the mechanic in action before solidifying all possibilities of its application. With two pictures of dice selection in action, everything is detailed and established quickly and already moving on to effect dice.<\/p>\n

Old School Hack<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0uses a similar device in its provision of the rules through a healthy dose of white space and tables to explain the game. Glancing over the pages, the entire book looks like a character sheet onto itself, something experienced players can easily relate to and newbies can access quickly during their own learning curve. In fact, each class is described on a working character sheet \u2013 no page turning required.<\/p>\n

While Hack<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s choice of presentation appears to be voluntarily as its mechanics are not complex and familiar to those already familiar with old school RPGs, the Marvel RPG<\/em><\/strong> does provide a more complex system of resolution and effect. Considering the example provided above, you can roll 7 dice and still receive a result of 7 plus additional effects and opportunities (bad things the Watcher\/GM can use against your character) placing an emphasis not just on the die\u2019s result by its step, their mechanic is not a simple roll and count. Adding to the complexity is that all rolls are opposed and each die rolled is drawn for various aspects of your character\u2019s abilities, based on what the sample pages reveal. With all that detail, it may be safe to say a game like the Marvel RPG<\/em><\/strong> requires diagrams to sell its mechanics to the reader.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for the future of roleplaying games as a whole? If future publications can provide more than just text and pretty pictures, does this open the door for more complex rules, applications, and mechanics? Can the simple photocopied character sheet be replaced by a self calculating app adjusting all stats with the press of a button? And will traditional roleplaying games still be considered \u201ctabletop\u201d games? We\u2019ve already seen the additional of programs like DDI, Skype, Fantasy Grounds, and more expand the reach of a gaming group beyond the same house and allow players to meet up on an international level.* Is it possible future RPGs can be made to remove the need for a Gamemaster, only to be replaced by a programmable app built within the rules to process game play by itself? If these options seem a bit farfetched, consider the idea of signing a contract with your finger \u2013 it was science fiction not but ten years ago and exists as reality today. Within the next decade, the roleplaying book itself could become the limited edition collector\u2019s item.<\/p>\n

* I myself have become dependent on technology such as Skype to play most of my games due to distance and a nasty car accident keeping me pinned to the office for months on end, so by no means am I dumping on these advancements.\u00a0Without them, I would have been a very moody patient.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture Book Roleplaying By The Warden Slipping under the radar has been perhaps one of the most anticipated and equally undervalued release of the Marvel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":829,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-under-the-hood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/829"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}