April '22 Murmurs: CBR+PNK
Plus, why stats are good, actually
Greetings! I have been mostly running more Vow of the Knight-Aspirants recently. It has been a lot of fun testing out the game with different groups online and in-person, including one multi-session series. (You can find a playlist of that series here.) Plus, I have drafted the physical playbooks, meaning I can actually test out way the two modular playbook halves fit together.
Rather than discuss Knight-Aspirants for this newsletter two months in row, I’ll tell you about the other game I ran most recently, and then offer a defense for the concept of stats in RPG design.
Ran: CBR+PNK
I ran a fun, high-concept one-shot at the most recent Gauntlet Community Open Gaming weekend. We played CBR+PNK, a stripped-down Forged in the Dark system for cyberpunk heists by Emanoel Melo. Our setting was Kamigawa, a world from the lore of Magic: The Gathering that has recently developed into a fantasy cyberpunk setting. Our quartet of runners had a high-stakes mission: stealing Umezawa’s jitte (an ancient hand weapon) for the Hyozan Reckoners.
Highlights: I had a lot of fun with this session. The four players built characters that showcased the cyberpunk and fantasy sides of our setting (A hacker! A street samurai! An insect ninja! A biker rat!?!) and I got to throw in a bunch of medium-subtle Magic lore references. For one example: their prize, Umezawa’s jitte, is a famous card from Magic’s first visit to Kamigawa.
The system delivered on its promise of fitting a meaty Forged in the Dark experience into a single session. The PCs hit the ground running, breaking into an Imperial museum to snag their artifact and then flee before rival criminals (in this case a destructive gang of enraged goblins) could foul things up. The players filled up on Stress by pushing their rolls and mitigating their consequences and got away basically scot free from the scene of the crime. In Blades in the Dark, characters clear their Stress with between-mission Downtime procedures. CBR+PNK modifies this for its one-shot premise: Once per mission, PCs can “take a breather,” unwind somehow (“take a pill, turn up the volume, punch a wall, check in with a loved one, patch yourself or another teammate up”), and roll to see how much Stress they clear. They get a bonus to this roll if they reveal more about their motivations for living this life. (In our session, our hacker released classified data in the form of holographic origami birds, and our insect samurai called home to his brood of offspring.) It’s a clever way to give players a release valve for their Stress while incentivizing deepening characterization.
Musings: My players telegraphed that they weren’t totally comfortable handing over their prize to their ruthless gangleader patron, Satoru Umezawa. In fact, they might prefer to give him the weapon right in the gut. I was very open to seeing them attempt to pull a double-cross—and surprised at how handily they pulled it off! I gave Satoru’s Defenses a long progress bar and the players overwhelmed it with a series of critical hits.
This was my first time running a Forged in the Dark game. I think I need to develop more of a sense of how to stat up NPCs as real challenges to players. This session made it feel tricky to present genuine danger or obstacles to players as long as they had Stress to spend. After all, they only face consequences if their dice come up short—a single 6 in your pool means full success, no complications. If they do get a complication, they can always choose to resist (which cancels out the complication at the cost of Stress) as long as their Stress tracks aren’t already full.
In Blades in the Dark, players can agree to certain complications as Devil’s Bargains, where they take on a consequence (e.g. “No matter what, the oni inside the jitte starts speaking to you inside your head”) in exchange for a bonus die. CBR+PNK replaces Devil’s Bargains with Glitch Dice, which get added by glitchy cyberware and create complications when they roll a 1–3. That makes sense for the genre, but means fewer complications if players simply work around rolling anything glitchy!
Final Thoughts: Forged in the Dark creates an overall feeling of player competence. You have a lot of control about what you’re risking and when, and you can feel like a real smooth operator as you skillfully spend your Stress to clinch your objectives. This makes it feel both appropriate and inappropriate for cyberpunk. It sells that you are seasoned runners who can take on high-stakes missions, but it does make it less like you’re really under-the-thumb of corporate overlords or other powers that be. After all, you can always save some Stress to resist whatever consequences they bring to bear.
I’m pleased to have experimented with this, and I’ll definitely try more GMing of Forged in the Dark in future to see what else I learn about running that system. You can find video of this session here.
Design Discussion: Why Stats?
One of my favorite RPG Substacks is Thomas Manuel’s Indie RPG Newsletter. Thomas does great work rounding up the latest developments in indie tabletop gaming, and opens many a newsletter with a provocative mini-essay about some aspect of play or design. In a recent newsletter, he asked the following: “Why do we have stats?”
Thomas argues that, in the context of “storygames” including Powered by the Apocalypse games, stats are vestigial. They are mere throwbacks to D&D that can be profitably replaced with newer concepts like rolling with questions (ala Pasion de las Pasiones) or spending thematically-fraught tokens (ala Apocalypse Keys).
As a designer of games in this vein who does make use of stats, I felt I had to rise to Thomas’s challenge and answer the question, “Why stats?” I’ll list a number of my games and discuss what stats bring to each.
Games where stats add poetry: Vow of the Knight-Aspirants, Plutonian Shards, Autumn Triduum, and Checkpoint Midnight
Like other words involved in a game’s design, stats are a chance to express what your game is about through deliberate diction. Yes, you could have players assign points directly to moves or stunts or the like, but coming up with a succinct and evocative list of stats can help to express the core of your game.
Plutonian Shards has a fairly standard array of stats: Tough, Savvy, Warm, and Strange
I was going for a utilitarian rundown here, like how a hardened space scoundrel might describe their crew. I did pick Warm to contrast with the cold Plutonian setting. But I think it’s most notable to contrast these stats with those in other games of mine.
Vow of the Knight-Aspirants has these stats: Courtesy, Ingenuity, Perseverance, Cheer, and Valor
Now we’ve got some poetry going on! The stats are, conceptually, the knightly virtues the squires are trying to live up to. Courtesy is used for the main social move. Notice how, even absent the text of the move itself, you can tell a “roll +Courtesy” move is going to have a more formal and less cagey feel than a “roll +Warm” or “roll +Savvy” move from Plutonian Shards.
Autumn Triduum has these stats: Faith, Hope, and Charity
More virtues as stats, this time the three theological virtues. This stat array signals very clearly that this game about religious sisters confronting the forces of darkness has questions of the soul on its mind. I’ve found that players often enjoy playing up whatever stat their sister is lowest in (“Yeah, so, Sister Scholastica is not the most charitable…” “Sister Naomi’s Faith is weak, sad to say.”) as they introduce their characters. And this gives a clear sense of where the sisters could be challenged and experience growth during the game!
Checkpoint Midnight has these stats: Weapon, Fable, Fixer, and Dreamer
A strange set of words. What do they mean about my game of supernatural operatives in Cold War Vienna? The stats are meant as slightly dismissive labels: “You’re nothing but a weapon,” “You’re just a dreamer,” etc. The player characters are spurred to transcend their stats—which they can, at a cost. By getting more entangled with the Great Powers, they can create Codenames for themselves, picking out cool designations (“Dead Man,” “Orpheus,” “St. George”). Codenames are custom stats set to +3 that players can roll instead of the default by giving Leverage over to their Handler. Leaning on your reputation ties you ever tighter to the agencies trying to mold you to their purposes… but the codenames sound so cool! Basically, this scheme of stats and codenames makes players come up with temptations for themselves to give more control over to their handlers.
Games where stats are the pitch for the game: Secret Science Sewer Siblings
Sometimes, listing the stats for a game serves to promote the game and clarify its media touchstones.
Secret Science Sewer Siblings has these stats: Teenager, Mutant, Ninja, and Critter
Pretty straightforward, but listing them always brings a smile to my face!
Games where shifting stats are a central mechanic: Great Soul Train Robbery
In the Sweetened by Honey Heist system, you have two stats and they see-saw back and forth.
Great Soul Train Robbery has these stats: Lover and Sinner
The stats demand the players constantly think about and explicate their character’s motivations. Am I doing this for selfless or selfish reasons? It matters a lot, because it affects which stat I roll!
The stats also shift up and down, always mirroring each other (If my Sinner goes from 3 to 4, my Lover goes from 3 to 2). Maxxing out either stat marks an endgame for your character. When Lover reaches 6 you are overcome by pity and make a foolhardy last stand. When Sinner reaches 6 you are damned and irrevocably claimed by the train to Hell. Stats shift based on your actions (you become what you habitually do) and based on special conditions like flashbacks and costly sacrifices (good things to call for if you’re worried about where you stats are headed). The stat see-sawing creates dramatic and poignant moments at the table, like a flashback to a life of vice right before a pivotal Lover roll (to avoid hitting 6 Lover on a success).
All told, I am very happy with the game design possibilities to be mined from stats. I certainly also enjoy games that eschew stats, but finding the pith, poetry, and pathos in stats themselves is something I value. What are your favorite names for stats in games? Any other unique uses of stats to highlight? Sound off in the comments below!
Elsewhere
—Back Again from the Broken Land is out! The PDF has been released, and you can get it from itchio here or from PledgeManager here. PledgeManager is also where you can pre-order a physical copy of the game. We are excited to bring this game of small adventurers and emotional stories to our backers and others.
—On April 29th, my game The Great Soul Train Robbery is scheduled to be featured on the official GenCon TV Twitch channel. Sarah, the host and GM of Sarah’s Table, will be putting the Desperados through their paces. Tune in here.
—On Monday, May 9th, I will appear on EN World’s Not DnD show! I will be chatting about Back Again from the Broken Land with the host and taking audience questions. Here’s a listing for the event. Tune in here for the livestream or listen to the podcast version after the fact here.
Till next time, may you avoid glitching out, buff your stats, and return home in triumph.
Gamefully yours,
Alexi
Thanks for linking to my newsletter, Alexi. And for the discussion about stats! Loved your insights and the stat array for Knight-Aspirants is truly lovely. :D
Hi Alexi!
Your observation about cyberpunk in FitD is interesting! I think it's a delicate balance to strike -- the scoundrels (or runners in this case) feeling competent but the world feeling suitably dangerous that competence isn't all that matters -- luck also matters, a lot, and so does positioning. I wonder if possibly you weren't going hard enough on the runners? I found that when I first started running FitD games, I felt reluctant to push too hard -- I would mostly make soft moves. And this works okay, but I think the system, particularly thanks to the ability to resist, sort of calls for All Hard Moves All the Time (or at least mostly). I also think that if you look at the GM actions in Blades or another FitD game (not sure if CBR+PNK has these; I know it's pretty light weight), they function more or less identically to GM moves in PbtA, and don't have to happen only on a miss or weak hit. Things should essentially get more complicated for them all the time. My favorite way this gets mechanized is the devil's bargain, and if the players aren't taking those, I'd be curious just why. I should be clear that I haven't played CBR+PNK, just read the pamphlet version quite a while ago, so there might be differences at the game level. I have run Neon Black, though, which is a really cool take on cyberpunk in FitD (and legitimately anticapitalist in a way that cyberpunk games rarely are), and in that game I didn't find myself having too much trouble finding that balance of letting the PCs be competent but also being ground down under the heels of the corps. Anyway, just some thoughts. Hopefully they're useful!