FASERIP

While there seems to be a general buzz over the release of the new Swords & Wizardry White Box compatible sci-fi RPG White Star by James M. Spahn, I find myself far more excited about another old-school retroclone that has recently been made available: FASERIP by Gratis Games.

Some background: in terms of hours playing RPGs, superhero games come a close second to fantasy in my life. Of the various systems, my favorite historically is Villains & Vigilantes for two reasons: I love the character generation system and the longest running and most successful superhero campaign I ever ran used this ruleset. The most hours logged, however, belongs to Champions. While I am a huge fan of random character generation, most folks who play superhero games generally have a very good idea of what they want to play and Champions does one of the best jobs of giving players that kind of control over character generation.

The most fun I have ever had playing a superhero game, however, is with Marvel Superheroes. It terms of actual system mechanics, this is by far my favorite system for playing a superhero-type of game. It does an awesome job of making me feel like I am playing a character straight out of a comic book.

Historically, however, I have never liked the character generation system nor the idea that campaigns took place inside the Marvel Universe. PCs varied in power so dramatically that it was often impossible to sustain a campaign because players would feel left out and powerless to make any impact on the game. I have never been a fan of parading around in someone else’s universe, let alone my least favorite comic book universe.

FASERIP solves both of these problems. It obviously has to divorce itself from Marvel, as does any ruleset that seeks to emulate the system. The real strength of FASERIP, however, is its character generation system. While still maintaining a random generation system, it ensures that all PCs will be of a similar power range. It also empowers the player to customize what has been handed them via a random dice roll.

Another really interesting touch that I appreciate is a section on non-traditional campaigns and how to handle them using the FASERIP system. Included are a Shadowrun-type setting, a fantasy-type setting and a sci-fi alien taking over the world-type setting. This has got my non-playing Gamer ADD revving up. Expect some FASERIP meditations coming soon.

Life Isn't Fair: Lessons from V&V and White Wolf

And Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, "Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had" (Luke 21:1-4; Mark 12:41-44).

One of the problems with scientific objectivism is that when applied to statements like "all men are created equal" it has a very difficult time justifying them. Objectively a quadraplegic is not equal to an NFL football player. Life isn't fair. We do not all begin life with the same hand of cards; however, in context of Christ, it is not the hand we are dealt, but rather the way we play the hand that matters. In the eyes of God, the poor widow played brilliantly with a very bad hand; whereas the rich played very poorly with fabulous hands. In other words, being a great human being is not dependent upon having having a bunch of gifts handed to us on a silver platter. Doing the best we can with what gifts we have — playing the hand of cards as best as we can — is what makes us great. In my own experience, this has been reflected in my gaming, none more so than with Villains and Vigilantes and Mage: the Ascension.

Like many gamers, I played a lot of White Wolf in the 90s. I played several campaigns and though I enjoyed them and the company of those I played with, none of them ever really inspired me until my GM pulled a fast one on us during a Mage campaign. He wanted us to have an appreciation for the motivations and situations of our enemies. Thus, during the second session of our campaign, he handed us the character sheets of the party of Technologists who were trying to deal with the same situation our original characters were. We spent the whole session playing our own adversaries.

We all screamed and complained and threw a fit — it just wasn't fair. We'd spent all that time creating our characters and now we weren't allowed to play them. Here's the rub: we all had more fun playing the Technologists than we did playing our own characters. We more easily got into character, we were more creative with our powers, and things just seemed to click. When we had to go back to playing those characters we thought we wanted to play, and so laboriously poured over using a point-based system, everything fell flat. We stopped gelling, our creativity tanked, and our characters no longer felt right. We actually began to look forward to playing the characters imposed upon us by our GM. The characters we made for ourselves were like the rich giving to the temple — we had everything we wanted in our characters. When confronted with characters we didn't want, we had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. By pushing ourselves beyond the character, to try and find fun despite the character, we gained much more than having the characters we thought we wanted.

Over the years, I've played a lot of Champions, probably more so than any other RPG other than D&D; however, it isn't my favorite superhero RPG. That distinction goes to Villains and Vigilantes. I just can't begin to explain how much I love all those random tables I get to use during character creation. I can never get the character I want using those tables, but I can tell you that the best super hero characters I ever played were a result of those tables (I even used them for my Champions games). Being dealt an odd hand always forced me to be a better player, to be creative with the hand I was dealt, and it always seemed to create a better gaming experience than I ever got with a point build.

This is why I am very comfortable (and even prefer) rolling for stats, and rolling for them in order. If a game doesn't have some kind of random character generation system, I'm not really all that interested. Give me the randomly generated gonzo mutant weirdo over the well constructed point built character any day. The gonzo mutant weirdo will push me as a player, push my creativity, and push the game into directions hitherto untold and unexplored. The end result is a better game, because that game will be a lot more fun.