The Culture: When The Brand Fits The Game

(Following from yesterday's post)

In terms of specific Brands in the hobby, there is a gold standard. One such brand has, consistently, shown that it understands both the hobby medium and that the Brand is not the Game- though you will not hear it in those terms. The gold standard is Pendragon.

This is a Brand of Runequest, and its aim is--and has always been--to impart the feeling of being a knight in the Arthurian Age of Britain. Using Runequest as a base bring in an established procedural infrastructure, in both design and language, for the mythic-focused fantastic adventure gaming experience.

A player, playing a family dynasty of knights in what today we call as "Rogue-like" (e.g. Rogue Legacy), can start The Great Pendragon Campaign in the early days of warlordism under Arthur's father and play successive generations through the Enchantment of Britain, the Grail Quest, and the Fall of Camelot.

This is an unusual game, in that the core appeal is to play through a set series of events, but the Arthurian mythos has very few fixed elements in it. The liminal space for adventure is far larger than it seems. Furthermore, there is plenty of room for players to establish their own domains within the overall scenario- and it is players, not the Referee, that decide on things like loyalty to Arthur or to turn against him.

That means that there is plenty of room for war, diplomacy, intrigue, and romance separate and distinct from what goes on at Camelot. While there is far more concern for the mystical, the supernatural, and the preternatural due to that Runequest foundation it remains the case that this is a wargame and your knight is expected to not only fight but to lead men (and to follow orders).

It is no surprise, therefore, that this Brand has spin-off Brands of its own: Prince Valiant (based on the comic), the more recent Paladin (the Matter of France), and there's been attempts at Norse and Japanese takes on the Brand in the past. Today, especially for those steeped in the discourse on the matter, one could create a fantastic mythical Western game using this same core Game as its foundation- something Deadlands showed to be viable years ago.

But it's not the only noteworthy Brand adaptation for the right reasons. Big Eyes, Small Mouth may be mostly forgotten now, but it was the basis for a pair of Brands from outside the hobby doing decent products.

As adaptations they were good fits, and I said so at the time. While the underlying game isn't that great, it was a better choice than either of the usual names thrown around for build-your-own toolkit products (HERO, GURPS) because it was, at the time, a better fit for what the Brand was about vs. the expectations of its audience. (Today? No; we can do much better now, mostly due to a great comprehension of both technical acumen and the acumen in communicating how to use a hobby game.)

To demonstrate that Brand adaptations need not be literal, look at Dream Pod 9's two breakout successes: Heavy Gear (Totally Not Armored Trooper VOTOMS) and Jovian Chronicles (Totally Not Mobile Suit Gundam)- the latter of which began as a Mekton II setting.

The Silhouette sytem, itself a mesh of Interlock (Mekton) and Shadowrun which are Brands of Traveller, turns out to work great with Real Robot mecha- and both of those Brands (sans G Gundam) are the definition of Real Robot settings with all that goes with it- complete with great potential for Certified Tomino Classic ends to a campaign.

In many cases, the problem with these games--from Pendragon on down--comes from Cargo Cult norms and not the games themselves. In short, YOU'RE PlAYING THEM WRONG!

A simple shift in perspective, the sort that the #BROSR is about, solves the long-standing issues overnight. For more bothersome troubles, a check to ensure that the machine actually works and is not dysfunctional may be in order; there are a lot of piss-poor performers out there, the result of Kyber Pass Copy production standards, and even more products out there that more or less work as intended but have one or two glaring flaws (e.g. OG TORG).

In short, the hobby is fixable. A lot of product will be flushed, but what remains will be high quality stuff that's all built to last and a lot of Brands can instead shift to an even cheaper model of just putting stuff up on a wiki to use with one of the few Games that exist.

And the good Brands out there will be the anvil that will be used to hammer the trash to scrap because those Brands do not fit the Game- and infamous examples will be named tomorrow.