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Latest Reviews| Grimm |  | | Reviewed by: Wayne Tonjes |
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Interview: Misguided Games’ Lewis Pollak, on Children
Page: 1/2
(5322 total words in this text)
(207 Reads) 
11-19-01
Posted by
Mark Bruno
Fantasy RPGs have been a staple of this industry since its inception more than 25-30 years ago. And while it’s always hard to be unique in that genre, Misguided Games is on the right track with their up-coming release, Children of the Sun.
Thanks for taking the time, Lewis, to answer a few questions regarding the company and its new RPG, Children of the Sun. Before we begin, however, why not give us an introduction to Misguided Games, specifically its history and employees.
Thank you! I'm glad we could get this together. I guess you could say that Misguided Games got started right about the time of Origins 2000. I hadn't incorporated yet or done anything like that, but I went to Origins and talked to industry folks like Greg Stafford, Mike Stackpole, Marc Miller and Mark Simmons. I told them I was considering becoming a game publisher. Of course, most of them told me I was nuts. I'd like to take a moment to say how friendly an industry this is by and large. There are people who have been very generous with their time and advice and I thank them for that.
The true origin of MGI goes back a number of months prior to that. A friend of mine had a concept that eventually became background material for Children of the Sun. At the time, though, I was thinking about a card game rather than an RPG. Meanwhile, I had been reading the work of Dan Ross on a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay mailing list. He sent a story to the list that was later published across three issues of Warpstone magazine. I was extremely impressed with the story and wanted to find a way to work with him. I contacted Dan to see if he was interested in helping to develop the card game. Nothing ever came of the card game, but when I later considered creating an RPG, I immediately thought of Dan again.
Dan and I have both been gaming for many years. I started in the mid-seventies, when I was about 6 years old. In case anyone is interested, I had no connection with the game industry prior to starting Misguided, other than having played role-playing games nearly all my life.
For nearly any RPG project these days, the art and graphic design are as important as the story itself. The cornerstone of Children of the Sun on that front is Jac Grenfell. Jac is a graphic designer from New Zealand. A friend asked me one day if I had ever been to www.demonground.org. I hadn't, so I went to poke around. It turned out that Jac had let the nice folks over at Demonground (you know who you are) use one of his pictures on their cover. I immediately fell in love with the image and knew it exhibited some properties that Dan had been trying to communicate to me. Subsequently, I contacted Jac and asked about licensing the image. One thing led to another and Jac ended up taking on the roles of Art Director and Graphic Designer for Children of the Sun. Jac has been completely invaluable to this project. I have had the pleasure of working with a number of freelancers on Children of the Sun so far, including writer Martin Dougherty, and artists Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, Socar Myles, Ken McCracken, and most recently John Shannon. The Internet really is amazing. I still laugh sometimes when I think about the fact we are working with people as far flung as the UK, Japan, Malta and New Zealand. I should also mention some of the amazing concept work that Darren Calvert created. Darren also drew our conic strip, We're Misguided, for several months. I am still hopeful that we will see some art from Darren in the final book, though that is not certain at this time.
Children of the Sun is described as a Dieselpunk fantasy role-playing game, and that its setting, a world of grit and oil, dust and mud, also is one in which magic and technology are combined. Can you explain the concept behind what makes this a unique combination for a fantasy role-playing game?
It's hard to be unique, isn't it? Certainly, Children of the Sun is by no means the only game that has had elements of magic and technology. Rifts, Castle Falkenstein, and Warhammer readily come to mind. I do think the manner in which various elements will be used, combined with the underlying system, will provide for a unique experience. It is interesting to note that the concept really shifted over time. Initially, the concept involved more of an anime/Final Fantasy sort of feel. Fortunately, we moved away from that, not because I don't like the idea, but because there are other companies out there (including Guardians of Order and R. Talsorian) doing a stellar job in the anime area. Totally unique is not necessarily a good thing, because doing something "out there" may tend to put people off. You really have to ask yourself if something hasn't been done then why not? There may be a really good reason. Dieselpunk is a slightly different niche or sub genre of fantasy. It has some familiar elements, some that are unfamiliar, and uses some familiar elements in unexpected ways. The goal was to create something that is different enough to be distinctive and special, but not so foreign that players have no idea what they are supposed to do.
So, why Dieselpunk? Why not technology driven by steam, water, or pure magic, for instance?
Flavor, really. We had some underlying concepts for the back story and mechanics in place. The precise choice of setting was in a sense arbitrary. I wanted to do fantasy, because it is what I know and love. Dan wanted to create something dark and edgy. What you are describing in the question is what I think of as "steampunk". Dieselpunk is the darker, dirtier side of steampunk. Think of a continuum between steampunk and cyberpunk. In terms of magic level, technological level, and grit/mood/tone, dieselpunk falls in between the two. More recently, I think some people are coming to associate steampunk with a darker feel, largely due to excellent recent GURPS supplements. This works to our benefit, really, as it creates more interest in the genre.
What is the relationship between the world's technological aspects and its magic counterpart? Are both dependant upon one another? Does one particular facet take precedence over another?
Both are pervasive in a sense. There are certain instances where one might take precedence over the other, but overall they coexist. One aspect of technology in the setting that is intriguing is that of "arcane engineering." Arcane engineering is a science that creates effects that often seem magical. There can be items with both arcane and magical components, so the lines can get a bit blurry. This is not to say that all technology has an arcane basis. There are plenty of things such as swords and firearms that are made the old fashioned way. I discovered awhile back that the arcane science we were developing for the setting had some similarities in terms of feel to the Age of Unreason series by Keyes, which I have since enjoyed reading.
Magic is a bit different in this system and setting, so let me describe it a bit. All player characters have a capacity to use magic in this system. That doesn't mean this is Ars Magica, though. "Magic" doesn't mean guys in pointy hats and robes. Truthfully, the magic system has certain commonalities with the feats of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons. There are spells, which we actually refer to as techniques, for all different sorts of characters, including warrior types, roguish types, and traditional mage sorts of characters. Let me also stress the word “capacity.” I don't like forcing players to do anything. Players can use magic, and I think they will want to, at some point, but they certainly do not have to. Depending too much on magic has its down side.
Aside from its magical and technological trappings, what other aspects of the game's world sets it apart from other fantasy worlds?
What is its "back story/history?"
The history of Raevich is too involved to really go into here, and the back story is another matter entirely. In terms of relatively recent history, Raevich has been recovering from a massive war that occurred over a century and a half ago. The Great Conflagration, as it is called, had strong elements of racial superiority and ethnic cleansing, and the recovery process has been slow and painful at times. At the same time, the war was the impetus for a great deal of social, magical, and technological innovation and these innovations have made people's lives better and eased the process.
One of the more interesting things about this setting to me is that it is like you grabbed elements of a typical Tolkien-derived fantasy setting and dragged them kicking and screaming into the future. For instance, the core book will focus to a degree on the island of Krace. Krace alone has several cities with more than a million people. Swords are still used for warfare, yet there are areas of Raevich where trains are used for transportation. It is a balancing act of the modern and the medieval. Too much modern and you wind up with something like Shadowrun, which is a great game, but not at all what we wanted. Too little modern and we have yet another fantasy game with no life of its own competing in a market that is already over saturated according to most people.
According to information presented on the web site, Children of the Sun doesn't feature the "standard" fantasy races (aside from elves). Why the decision to present anthropomorphous races, such as the cat-like Avendera or the wolf-like Luparathi? And why were elves included as opposed to, say, dwarves or halflings?
Well, technically I think we'd have to call humans a standard fantasy race as well. During development of the races, the history of the elves became quickly and deeply intertwined with the humans. It didn't take long before we realized that the elves needed to be there. Personally, I've never been a big fan of elves, so I certainly had no overwhelming desire to include them, but they truly belong there. They do fit a bit of a different role in Raevich, though, so hopefully those who do like them will find some new challenges. Perhaps others, such as myself, who have never been crazy about them, will find something to like about them where they might normally not.
At no point did anyone say something like, "Ok, let's have humans and one other 'normal' race plus a bunch of weird stuff." I do think though that the result has some benefits. On the one hand we have a number of races that may have some resemblance to familiar archetypes, but have their own quirks and present their own unique role-playing opportunities. At the same time, including humans and elves in the game makes for an easy springboard into the game for role-players with less experience or those players who prefer to really get acquainted with a setting before they start branching out into the more unusual sorts of characters.
As to the presence of several anthropomorphic races, it wasn't a conscious decision; it simply happened. I can tell you about the Thorqua best, because I created the concept behind them. I love the short races: dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc. I really wanted to create a short race that didn't get laughed at all of the time. I wanted something that when you saw a couple of these guys come around a corner, you thought twice about messing with them. Another major factor in the development of the Thorqua was a desire to incorporate some aspects of the Maori of New Zealand and the aboriginal tribes of Australia into the game. Let me add that we have tried to be very sensitive to that culture and neither make light of nor steal" aspects of their society. Finally, I wanted to do a reptilian race that wasn't some kind of lizard. What I ended up with were a race of tribal, turtle-like beings. I've grown quite fond of them.
How do the different races interact with one another on social, political and economical levels? In other words, what are the dynamics between this eclectic mix of anthropomorphic beings, humans and elves all sharing the same world?
The elves are in some ways the central force of the last two thousand years, leading up to the Great Conflagration we were talking about, where a large contingent of elves took the center stage as the "bad guys." Since that time, the elves as a whole have largely been regarded with pity or scorn.
The humans and elves have lived arm in arm for thousands of years, so their relationship is well established. There are a number of prominent human nations that split off from the elvish nation of Eltherion at one time or another. Krace is named for a human who led a revolution against the elves that were ruling over the island several hundred years ago. The island is currently home to members of all of the races.
The fey-like Banfilidh came to prominence during the war for their ability to harvest a variety of pollens for nutritive and medical purposes. They continue to trade heavily with the other races. The Hu Lenkra once came into contact with the other races only through raiding, but eventually found more peaceful ways to put their talents to use. They can now be found throughout Raevich in modest numbers.
Three of the races, the Avendera, Thorqua, and the Zheol-Jhe tend to be relatively isolationist. The Avendera still harbor resentment from some events that occurred thousands of years ago that the other races scarcely remembers. The Thorqua live all over the world, but largely keep to their own villages and their own affairs unless called upon. The Zheol-Jhe come from the Blue Realm beneath the waves. While some of them certainly do get out into the world, the majority of their people remain close to home.
The Luparathi are perhaps the most unconventional of the races in Children of the Sun. Many people still consider these wolf-like creatures from Krace to be mere animals, and do not recognize their basic rights. A few brave Lupi lead the effort to gain recognition as sentient beings, but their worst enemy in this effort has been their own brethren who neither understand nor care. It is probably safe to say that had one of the military units of Krace, the Unforgiven, not taken to using these creatures as mounts and companions, they would probably be extinct by now.
The rule mechanics powering Children of the Sun have been named the Token System. What are its specifics and its "philosophy?"
In some ways designing the Token System was easy, since it largely dictated its own design. Before development began, I had definite ideas about how the world worked in a physical and metaphysical sense as well as strong ideas about what I wanted the game experience to be like. Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the Token System was that I wanted a system that would put the focus on what the player wanted their character to do and when they wanted them to do it and give them the flexibility to implement those plans. A great deal of the system's basics followed from this, and from the desire to put the player in the middle of the action and keep them involved.
One cornerstone of the system, naturally, is the use of tokens. Everybody gets a token. Among other things, the token allows you to act when it is not your prescribed turn in the initiative order or even determine what the initiative order will be. A situation that routinely comes up in every game I have ever played involves the kind of instance where you are transitioning from a social encounter to a combat encounter. You don't generally keep track of stuff like rounds and initiative when you are talking to somebody. All of a sudden, something changes about the situation, and you are in a combat round with initiative and all that other good stuff. Here, the tokens actually dictate when combat begins.
Let's say you are sitting across the table from someone who threatens you verbally. You'd like to dive across the table and forcibly assist him in finishing his meal. You can do that at any time by tossing your token on the table. The token indicates that a combat round has started, and if you throw yours out first, it means that you get to act first. No one can go before you do, because they are reacting to what you have done. This can create a sense of tension during games, which is a lot of fun. You have to stay on your toes because you never know what somebody else in your group might do or when they might do it.
Once you are into the middle of a combat encounter, a token can be used to do something out of sequence. Suppose someone has a crossbow aimed at you. You could play a token and attempt to reach them before they can fire at you. I am told that this concept exists in some miniatures games as well.
Die lovers rejoice, because the Token System uses lots of them. There are nine attributes(three each physical, mental, and social) and a die type and a number of dice represent each. The die type represents potential and the number of dice the consistency in reaching that potential. A central concept is that of a quality test. When a quality test is made, you roll the dice that correspond to your attribute and keep only the highest die roll. The die types for a particular attribute don't usually change once you create your character, but the number of dice you roll will change frequently.
How is task/skill resolution handled through this system?
One thing to note about the system is that skills are important. Maybe that sounds obvious, but a great deal of effort actually went into ensuring that skills were truly useful and remained that way. This goes back to the previous question where I said that all characters could use magic. It was important that going with all skills and no magic was a viable option.
In the Token System, skills have a rank. That rank is added to the result of a quality test (see question 8). Also, the rank in a skill often limits how successful you can be at a task. My favorite example of how this works is a tracking example. It doesn't matter how lucky a die roll you get, there is simply no way that a person who is a novice tracker can potentially glean the same information from a set of prints as an expert. If the expert is blind as a bat, he may not be very consistent compared to the novice with the eagle eyes, but when he is able to see the clues he will be able to glean far more information from them because of experience. Because of this, the system gives the advantage to a grizzled veteran who is past his prime physically as opposed to a novice with great attributes. This might sound complicated, but in actual practice it isn't.
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