Nice work Morgue. :) I wasn't able to articulate this part of my thought on Torg all that well.
You know, I buy and read a lot of games and settings. I go through phases, as I'm sure everyone does, but there are a handful of games which seem appealing to me each time I see them on my shelf. Al Qadim is one, Planescape another, and TORG is another.
I've re-visited them all, to some extent, in recent times... and I think all are profoundly limited by the "adventure" mentality, and a lack of this understanding about this character-focus we're talking about. To me, these settings all scream a character focus.
Games like Shadowrun and Deadlands, with their more inherent adventure/quest focus are cool... but don't compel my interest in the same way.
I am in total agreement about the starting point for games of Torg - and this is despite my loathing of orgin stories. In Torg's case it's always seemed to me that the orgin story is the story.
And when I was a player, I was never made aware that collapsing a realm would lead to the deaths of everyone inside it. That's amazing stuff.
Torg has the potential to be a very potent game. In fact, there was an Awesomify Torg thread at story games in '07... here:
TBH, I'm not sure that subsequent adventure and supplement writers knew either. It's buried in a single line somewhere deep in the meta-physical exposition of the internal logic of possibility exchange and function. In fact, most of the PC templates offered in most supplements are not legal or plausible if you paid attention to that section.
It was really a game that suffered, IMHO, from a bit too much supplement escalation, and from a "sure, include blah - including more stuff can only make it better." Nobody involved in writing any of it seemed to ever think "hang on a minute: does this actually make sense?"... Which is why it ended up a pulpy mess, more evocative than effective.
*le sigh*
All this reminiscing has made me semi-keen to write another KapCon scenario. I wrote one for KapCon '99, but got absolutely no takers; but my disguised TORG adventure The Storm Breaks was the best con game I've ever run...
Comments 4
You know, I buy and read a lot of games and settings. I go through phases, as I'm sure everyone does, but there are a handful of games which seem appealing to me each time I see them on my shelf. Al Qadim is one, Planescape another, and TORG is another.
I've re-visited them all, to some extent, in recent times... and I think all are profoundly limited by the "adventure" mentality, and a lack of this understanding about this character-focus we're talking about. To me, these settings all scream a character focus.
Games like Shadowrun and Deadlands, with their more inherent adventure/quest focus are cool... but don't compel my interest in the same way.
Reply
Reply
And when I was a player, I was never made aware that collapsing a realm would lead to the deaths of everyone inside it. That's amazing stuff.
Torg has the potential to be a very potent game. In fact, there was an Awesomify Torg thread at story games in '07... here:
http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=2413&page=1#Item_0
Reply
It was really a game that suffered, IMHO, from a bit too much supplement escalation, and from a "sure, include blah - including more stuff can only make it better." Nobody involved in writing any of it seemed to ever think "hang on a minute: does this actually make sense?"... Which is why it ended up a pulpy mess, more evocative than effective.
*le sigh*
All this reminiscing has made me semi-keen to write another KapCon scenario. I wrote one for KapCon '99, but got absolutely no takers; but my disguised TORG adventure The Storm Breaks was the best con game I've ever run...
Reply
Leave a comment