I played Aria...
Apr. 6th, 2005 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantua...and all I got was this lousy dissertation.
No, so last weekend, my friend Emily and I got together to make up a couple of countries using the world book and then play them out using the Interactive History rules in the core book.
OK, first up, the World book is, flat-out, the best book on the subject of world-building for a fantasy setting. Straight up nuts and bolts construction that doesn't let you forget anything and makes it easy to quickly compare different factors in different countries and rate them. Also, the numbers provide an easy framework to quickly flesh out with descriptive detail.
So we muddled through and I made a an ancient, peace oriented country ruled by secret societies. Think ancient China meets the Illuminati. Emily came up with a formerly expansive empire that had dwindled away to a small core. This homeland had recently been subject to a revolt and the new leaders were determined to restore the glory of the former Empire.
So then we tried to play out their interactions through the Interactive History rules.
Hoo-boy.
First -- Aria uses more jargon per square inch of text than a transcript of a teenage hacker wanna-be chat session. So there are Attributes and Descriptors and Aspects and what are we testing on again? There are tables everywhere except where you need them. They're totally comprehensive except they never tell you what you want to know (or they never tell you all of it).
Second -- You're trying to roll *under* a target number. But there are degrees of success. So the lower you roll the better you're doing. But there are these breakpoints to show when you've gone from a Marginal to a Complete Successs (or whatnot). And they're negative. So it's like -1 = Marginal, -2 to -5 = Complete etc.
Now, I don't know why but this completely messed with my mojo. In a system with Levels of Success, I want to roll as high as I can, I want to be as positive as I can and negative success brackets just threw me off.
Third -- You have crisis events when certain thresholds are reached. Like when popular consent for your authority is low and the amount of power you try to exercise over the populace is high. It's a crisis and can result in different things happneing (like a civil war or riot or something). Which, ok, Emily's country was in upheaval from the recent overthrow sure. But sometimes you *want* a number to be in crisis.
We both had a low Tolerance for magic in our countries. But we wanted that number to represent a cultural preference, not some sort of dire hassle that we had to test against every single time we went another round. And we have to keep testing every round until the numbers improve. Judging the rules, "improvement" was our Tolerance going up. But what if we didn't care to have it that way? Nope, under the Aria system, all societies evolve towards tolerant enlightenment.
Granted, this intolerance for Magic could seed a lot of great stories, but we weren't playing at that level, we were at a national level. We just wanted to get on to the invasion.
Fourth -- Emily kicked my peace-loving ass. *humph*
Looking back through these books it's obvious that they had a lot of talent and resources available to them. There's an incredible dream buried in these books. How it could've gone so wrong is really a shame.
Next time we get together, I'm going to try and do the same thing under Heroquest.
later
Tom
No, so last weekend, my friend Emily and I got together to make up a couple of countries using the world book and then play them out using the Interactive History rules in the core book.
OK, first up, the World book is, flat-out, the best book on the subject of world-building for a fantasy setting. Straight up nuts and bolts construction that doesn't let you forget anything and makes it easy to quickly compare different factors in different countries and rate them. Also, the numbers provide an easy framework to quickly flesh out with descriptive detail.
So we muddled through and I made a an ancient, peace oriented country ruled by secret societies. Think ancient China meets the Illuminati. Emily came up with a formerly expansive empire that had dwindled away to a small core. This homeland had recently been subject to a revolt and the new leaders were determined to restore the glory of the former Empire.
So then we tried to play out their interactions through the Interactive History rules.
Hoo-boy.
First -- Aria uses more jargon per square inch of text than a transcript of a teenage hacker wanna-be chat session. So there are Attributes and Descriptors and Aspects and what are we testing on again? There are tables everywhere except where you need them. They're totally comprehensive except they never tell you what you want to know (or they never tell you all of it).
Second -- You're trying to roll *under* a target number. But there are degrees of success. So the lower you roll the better you're doing. But there are these breakpoints to show when you've gone from a Marginal to a Complete Successs (or whatnot). And they're negative. So it's like -1 = Marginal, -2 to -5 = Complete etc.
Now, I don't know why but this completely messed with my mojo. In a system with Levels of Success, I want to roll as high as I can, I want to be as positive as I can and negative success brackets just threw me off.
Third -- You have crisis events when certain thresholds are reached. Like when popular consent for your authority is low and the amount of power you try to exercise over the populace is high. It's a crisis and can result in different things happneing (like a civil war or riot or something). Which, ok, Emily's country was in upheaval from the recent overthrow sure. But sometimes you *want* a number to be in crisis.
We both had a low Tolerance for magic in our countries. But we wanted that number to represent a cultural preference, not some sort of dire hassle that we had to test against every single time we went another round. And we have to keep testing every round until the numbers improve. Judging the rules, "improvement" was our Tolerance going up. But what if we didn't care to have it that way? Nope, under the Aria system, all societies evolve towards tolerant enlightenment.
Granted, this intolerance for Magic could seed a lot of great stories, but we weren't playing at that level, we were at a national level. We just wanted to get on to the invasion.
Fourth -- Emily kicked my peace-loving ass. *humph*
Looking back through these books it's obvious that they had a lot of talent and resources available to them. There's an incredible dream buried in these books. How it could've gone so wrong is really a shame.
Next time we get together, I'm going to try and do the same thing under Heroquest.
later
Tom
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-06 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 01:26 pm (UTC)Too funny.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-06 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 12:13 am (UTC)For example, the magic tlerance thing you dscussed. What each roll should have been was about how weird cults are popping up, little splinter groups and missionaries from magical countries. And you are putting them down, or adapting, or having other crisises. But that just doesn't come across in the game.
Storytelling on the macro level is possible. I just don't think Aria actually succeeded in doing that.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 02:47 pm (UTC)The Aria:Worlds stuff isn't the game in-and-of-itself. It's the vehicle for fast-forwarding between eras of a game in a logically-consistent, rich, and interesting manner. When you get something intriguing, stop and actually roleplay.
At least, that was always my impressions of it, and how I've seen it used before...