Wednesday, 09 May 2007
(Batteries Not Required) A short Playtest Review by Dan Hemmens
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A little while ago, Modus Operandi ran a 24 hour RPG competition, based on the concept of "espionage through the ages." One of the most interesting entries in this competition was Grunting: the Race for Fire. G:tRfF is a game of intrigue and espionage set in the kind of pseudo-stone-age that has dinosaurs in it. The premise is simple: You not have fire, you want fire, you go get fire.
The big twist in G:tRfF is that nobody is allowed to speak English except the GM. All communication around the table has to take place in "cave-speak" - a made-up language (or "constructed language" if you prefer) with a vocabulary of less than fifty words. It is really this, rather than any of the actual logistical problems which your characters are faced with, that provides the core dynamic of the game.
The actual game mechanics in G:tRfF are extremely forgiving. You have four stats, rated 1-4, and all task resolution is rolled on 2D6 plus your stat, with a 7 or greater succeeding. As statistically minded readers will already have worked out, this means that you're pretty much never going to fail anything. One or two early playtesters expressed concern at this situation " people still tend to assume that a system in which PCs don't regularly fail at stuff is a bad one. In fact the near-impossibility of failure is a crucial part of the game's appeal.
The whole point of G:tRfF is to engage with the cave-speak. The fun of the game comes from trying to work out how to combine the words for "cave," "tree," and "water" to communicate ideas like "we will attack the enemy cavemen under cover of darkness, with Ug and Thag causing a distraction, allowing Borg and Oog to sneak up to their guards and knock them unconscious with a rock." (in case you're interested, it comes out as something like "Lo-lo. Ug, Thag, RAAAAAR nuh-muh-hoom. Borg, Oog, tip-tip-bash-Zzzz nu-muh-hoom").
If the game mechanics gave you any chance of actually getting something wrong, the game would become massively frustrating very, very quickly. Coming up with plans is " in the humble opinion of this reviewer " the least interesting part of any RPG, and having to come up with a workable plan, with limited resources, and then translate it into a fictional language and communicate it to your friends, who will probably only understand half of it is going to get tired quickly. By making failure all but impossible in practice, G:tRfF frees the player to enjoy the almost parlour-game like atmosphere of cave-speak and hastily drawn diagrams (cave paintings are also allowed) without having to worry about actually being effective.
One of the most interesting things about the game, though, is the way that after about half an hour, the cave-speak starts to actually make sense. It evolves through play, and because it's a limited vocabulary you actually get reasonably good at manipulating and interpreting it. You gradually evolve your own mini-language, as combine words to fill gaps in the dictionary. So in the first playtest "Bo-Jhit" (literally "Rock-Stick") came to be the accepted word for "Spear", which then led to "Bo-Jhit-Hur" ("Rock-Stick-Man") to mean "guard" and (in the second, ever so slightly silly playtest) "He-Marr How Bo Jhit TROAH siii-la" to mean "Giant, dinosaur mounted ballista."
Given the number of RPGs that have their roots, at least ostensibly, in the works of Tolkein, it's perhaps fitting that someone should come up with a game which includes old Reuel's real area of interest: the invention of fictional languages.
Oh. And Grunting is also a lot of fun to actually play.
The big twist in G:tRfF is that nobody is allowed to speak English except the GM. All communication around the table has to take place in "cave-speak" - a made-up language (or "constructed language" if you prefer) with a vocabulary of less than fifty words. It is really this, rather than any of the actual logistical problems which your characters are faced with, that provides the core dynamic of the game.
The actual game mechanics in G:tRfF are extremely forgiving. You have four stats, rated 1-4, and all task resolution is rolled on 2D6 plus your stat, with a 7 or greater succeeding. As statistically minded readers will already have worked out, this means that you're pretty much never going to fail anything. One or two early playtesters expressed concern at this situation " people still tend to assume that a system in which PCs don't regularly fail at stuff is a bad one. In fact the near-impossibility of failure is a crucial part of the game's appeal.
The whole point of G:tRfF is to engage with the cave-speak. The fun of the game comes from trying to work out how to combine the words for "cave," "tree," and "water" to communicate ideas like "we will attack the enemy cavemen under cover of darkness, with Ug and Thag causing a distraction, allowing Borg and Oog to sneak up to their guards and knock them unconscious with a rock." (in case you're interested, it comes out as something like "Lo-lo. Ug, Thag, RAAAAAR nuh-muh-hoom. Borg, Oog, tip-tip-bash-Zzzz nu-muh-hoom").
If the game mechanics gave you any chance of actually getting something wrong, the game would become massively frustrating very, very quickly. Coming up with plans is " in the humble opinion of this reviewer " the least interesting part of any RPG, and having to come up with a workable plan, with limited resources, and then translate it into a fictional language and communicate it to your friends, who will probably only understand half of it is going to get tired quickly. By making failure all but impossible in practice, G:tRfF frees the player to enjoy the almost parlour-game like atmosphere of cave-speak and hastily drawn diagrams (cave paintings are also allowed) without having to worry about actually being effective.
One of the most interesting things about the game, though, is the way that after about half an hour, the cave-speak starts to actually make sense. It evolves through play, and because it's a limited vocabulary you actually get reasonably good at manipulating and interpreting it. You gradually evolve your own mini-language, as combine words to fill gaps in the dictionary. So in the first playtest "Bo-Jhit" (literally "Rock-Stick") came to be the accepted word for "Spear", which then led to "Bo-Jhit-Hur" ("Rock-Stick-Man") to mean "guard" and (in the second, ever so slightly silly playtest) "He-Marr How Bo Jhit TROAH siii-la" to mean "Giant, dinosaur mounted ballista."
Given the number of RPGs that have their roots, at least ostensibly, in the works of Tolkein, it's perhaps fitting that someone should come up with a game which includes old Reuel's real area of interest: the invention of fictional languages.
Oh. And Grunting is also a lot of fun to actually play.
~
The thing about the lack of failures is that, in Grunting, you're ony meant to make the players roll dice when it's life or seriously wounding type situations (which isn't exactly what I did in the playtest, but then it was a test after all). That way, the very rare times you fail will usually result in very interesting situations arising, like falling off a cliff, or being eaten by a dinosaur.
I was amazed how the language evolved in the tests as well. As another reviewer pointed out, it does mean that essentially Grunting could easily be an international game, cause as long as everyone knows cave-speak, it doesn't matter what your normal native language is (unless you need to write stuff to the GM). You can even take your cave-man to Las Vegas! ;)
I'm very glad people seemed to have fun - plus I got a mug and a t-shirt out of it! Woot!
I really loved Grunting - but then I like the silly, party-game feel. I think it's really well judged and although I remember walking home with Dan pondering the dice mechanics I think he's right that it would be too frustrating if failure was a pressing possibility. I mean having spent the last half hour painstakingly communicating your plan in grunts and drawings, to then have it screw up would be too much to bear :)
God, this is cliquey - but the world needs grunting, dammit!