Tagline: The first game designed by Richard Garfield and released to the public, RoboRally shows the intriguing conceptual ideas and addictive game play which have since become Garfield’s stock in trade. Like so many games released by Wizards of the Coast I first picked this product up because the description just sounded too intriguing to miss. Like every product I have ever picked up from the Wizards, I was anything but disappointed.

“Like every product I have ever picked up from the Wizards, I was anything but disappointed.” Ah, 1998. How I miss ye. RoboRally remains one of my favorite games. Unfortunately, my original copy was lost in a move and later turned up in the bottom of a box that was being stored in a pole barn. Although sadly water-damaged, it is still tremendous fun. Anyone know what Richard Garfield is up to these days?

GAME CONCEPT

In the future the widget factories of the world are controlled by the mightiest artificial intelligences ever created by man. Capable of solving any problem which might arise and controlling the entire factory from top to bottom to compensate for any problems and keep production right on schedule, these mighty machines suffered from only a single problem: Boredom.

Then one day a processing robot fried a circuit and went careening onto a conveyor belt, which sent him spinning through the high-powered laser systems and dropped him off just in time for his broken and decaying programming databanks to send him plummeting down a bottomless disposal bit on the factory floor.

The computers were … amused.

Immediately they created the game of RoboRally – each computer controlled a single robot and, using a limited set of data registers, was required to send the robots through a specially converted section of the factory floor.

In the boardgame RoboRally you are the computer, programming your robot to cross the factory floor and reach a set of checkpoints in a specific sequence in order to win the game. In your way are conveyor belts, bottomless pits, gears, crushers, pushers, and laser beams… not to mention the robots of your fellow players.

RULES

The game comes with six gameboards which can be played individually or arranged in any combination you want. The checkpoints you must reach are represented by six counters numbered from 1 to 6 – you can place these counters anywhere on the gameboards you want and in any order you choose. The options are practically infinite.

On each turn you are dealt nine program cards. From these you must select five cards and “program” your robot by assigning one card to each of five programming registers. When all the players have completed programming their robots the turn begins – each register is considered in order and your robot moves.

This sounds simple, but in truth you’ll find yourself making bonehead mistakes – especially when you come in contact with the board elements. “Okay, first I’ll move forward, which will put me on the conveyor belt which will move me there, then I’ll turn left, and the conveyor belt will move me again, turning me as I go, so that when I move backwards on the next phase I’ll end up…” And, of course, you can always be pushed around by the other robots on the board so that your preciously planned sequence of movements will suddenly all be off by one square … and the results cascade through the rest of the turn.

Plus, your robot can take damage and be destroyed by various game elements on the board. Plus, your robot and the robots of the other players are all outfitted with lasers – allowing you to whittle away. What can be worse than getting blasted out of existence and having to start over from the beginning (there is also a way of “archiving” a copy of your robot at certain waypoints on the board)? Well, as you take damage the number of program cards you dealt to select from are decreased. If you take enough damage some of your robot’s programming registers may become locked – meaning that the cards you have assigned to those registers will have to stay the same until you can get your robot repaired.

Finally there are ways of retrofitting your robot with special abilities.

STRENGTHS

This game is a tremendous amount of fun. If you’ve ever played Paranoia and gotten great laughs out of watching your characters getting fried you’ll already understand the appeal this game carries with it – nothing is more hilarious then when one of your fellow players suddenly groans, “Oh nooooo…” and you know he’s made a mistake in his plans and his robot is about to go cascading off-course and into jeopardy.

The game is beautifully designed by Phil Foglio – the cover illustration of a ZIP 550 looking nervously over his shoulder as he enters the factory is absolutely perfect at setting the tone of the game. Foglio also designed the miniatures which come with the game.

WEAKNESSES

The learning curve is pretty simple, but there are some rules which could so with better explanation. Wizards of the Coast has posted the complete rules and a FAQ at their website, and from what I’ve seen they have not fixed these problems.

The confusion over these rules is quickly eliminated however by some practical familiarity with the game. Play your first game on a single board and establish up front that rule interpretations could fluctuate wildly during the course of the game as you figure out some of the nuances.

There are several handy reference sheets and the rulebook is laid out in such a fashion that information is easy to find when you need it. This is not an overwhelming problem, merely one of having to play the game first before you can see what some rules mean.

CONCLUSION

This game is great. The idea is great, the carry-through is great, the rules are great, the entertainment value is great. You simply can’t go wrong.

There are also several expansion sets for the game (Armed and Dangerous, Grand Prix, and (coming later in 1998) Radioactive). I hope to own and review both these and the second make of this game in the near future here on RPGNet.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Author: Richard Garfield
Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $34.95
Page count: n/a
ISBN: 1-57530-088-5
Originally Published: 1998/06/19

[ This is a review of the first make of the RoboRally game. The second make of the game (which I do not yet own), slightly altered the lay-out of the rules and changed the design of the miniatures included with the game. However, to my knowledge, game play was not affected to any serious degree. The ISBN product code above refers to the second make of RoboRally, as that is the one which you can still order from Wizards of the Coast. ]

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Over on Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Mr. Raggi wrote a really good piece on Toybox Style Play.

Check it out.

Basically, he’s talking about a principle of design in which you include elements which (a) aren’t designed to be interacted with mechanically and (b) don’t actually have any pre-designed purpose (or, at least, no “meaningful” one).

In other words, make it a point to include randomly cool shit in your adventures.

I really couldn’t agree more strongly with this. My 101 Curious Items are  an example of this. Similarly, whenever I’m keying a room, I’ll try to make it a point to include at least one detail that is interesting-but-irrelevant. These aren’t always things that the PCs can interact with, but they frequently are. (For example, in one “empty” room I littered the floor with shards of shattered pottery… which could be reassembled with a mend spell to reveal several crude busts. In another case I put “age-old scratches” on a door. )

If you’ve been reading the Alexandrian for awhile, you know that I make it a very specific point to design scenarios in which I really have no idea what the outcome will be. I want to be surprised by the actions of my players and to be just as surprised by what happens in play as they are. Stuff like Don’t Prep Plots and Node-Based Scenario Design describe some of the ways I achieve that at a macro-level. But this “toybox” design is one of the ways I exercise the same principle on the micro-scale: If you include enough randomly cool shit, eventually the players are going to grab onto it and do something ridiculously cool with it.

From At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson:

Two other vitamins — pantothenic acid and biotin — don’t have numbers or, come to that, much profile, but that is largely because they never cause us problems. No human has yet been found with insufficient quantities of either.

Poking around suggests that Bryson’s statement is not completely true. Isolated cases have been observed (usually due to a wider incidence of starvation) and the condition has been studied in mice. Intriguingly, some subjects have reported a “burning sensation” in their feet.

Which is, it turns out, the first symptom of “space scurvy”. On the first long journeys through the solar system, it was discovered that some curious interaction of solar radiation and rotationally induced “gravity” caused a breakdown of pantothenic acid. The resulting vitamin deficiency causes nausea, vomiting, and impaired mental faculties. Worse yet, victims manifest severe sleep disturbances: Think of the severe “sleep driving” side-effects of Ambien, crank them up a couple hundred degrees, and unleash them on a spaceship. Victims have been known to sleepwalk their way out of airlocks, damage ship reactors (some suggest victims of space scurvy actually have an unnatural attraction to sources of radioactivity), or simply pilot their ships into the nearest planets.

Some crazies in the Belt have actually been known to deliberately induce the deficiency disease, believing that the “pantothenic visions” have deep spiritual or religious meaning. In one well-known incident, the Bryson Colony broadcast its insane death throes throughout the entire system as a population of 166 souls commited ecstatic, prolonged suicide by way of holy vision.

Technoir uses a simple core mechanic in which verbs are used to push adjectives onto characters. (For example, you might use your character’s Hack verb to push the adjective “exploited” onto a gunrunner’s security system.) That may look a little gimmicky, but it actually seems like a really slick little system.

What I find particularly notable about this is that it mechanically articulates and reinforces a procedure that I use almost constantly when I’m refereeing in virtually any system: When a player proposes an action with an uncertain outcome, the action is mechanically resolved using the rules of the game. Then I consider how that outcome has shifted the status quo and carry that knowledge forward as additional actions are proposed and resolved. I’m intrigued to see how a system that feeds directly into this process will perform in play: Will it piggyback it? Reinforce it? Interfere with it? Enhance it?

I’ll probably have more to say about Technoir once I’ve had a chance to actually play it, but my read-thru of the rulebook actually got me thinking about something completely different that I want to touch on today: Skill challenges in 4th Edition.

Technoir structures its core mechanic into Sequences using a very simple system of turn-taking. The trick to resolving sequences is pretty simple: Because adjectives are meaningful, the GM can use his common sense to know when a sequence ends (because the adjectives that have been applied will either result in the players being successful or unsuccessful in achieving their goal). This works because you can’t just slap adjectives on willy-nilly; you need to establish the proper vector by which the adjective can be applied. (In other words, you need to explain what actions you’re taking to achieve the objective.)

The result is that adjectives both arise naturally from the game world and also strictly describe the game world. As a result, sequences build organically and logically to unforeseen conclusions.

The system is, as far as I can tell, incredibly flexible and can be applied to almost any conflict (or what Technoir refers to as a “contention”): Hacking, seduction, combat, interrogation, tracking, chases, etc.

In other words, Technoir‘s sequences have the same mechanical goal as 4th Edition’s skill challenges (resolving discrete chunks of action in a structured format). But skill challenges are the polar opposite of Technoir‘s sequences:

First, whereas Technoir trusts the creativity and common sense of the players at the table to determine when a goal has been achieved (or thwarted), 4th Edition’s skill challenges hard-code a success-or-failure condition which is completely dissociated from the game world. Or, as Technoir puts it:

After any turn is taken and an action is performed, everyone at the table should look at what’s happening in the fiction. As I said before, there’s no score. You have to decide for yourselves when this ends. Each player should respect the adjectives that have been applied and removed and decide what her protagonist wants now — no matter what hse came into the scene wanting. You should do the same for your antagonists. You might find that one side got what they cam for and is done. Or that the two sides are now willing to compromise. Or that there are no good vectors for attacks any more. Look for new ways out of the situation. Maybe it’s time to stop rolling dice and cut to a new scene.

But if there is still something to contend over, go on to the next turn and play out the next action.

Technoir cares intimately and enthusiastically about what your characters have done, why they’ve done it, and what they’ve accomplished by doing it. 4th Edition’s skill challenges, on the other hand, don’t give a crap about any of that: If you haven’t rolled four successes yet, then your characters haven’t succeeded (no matter what they’ve achieved with those checks). And if you have rolled four successes, then your characters have totally succeeded (even if their actions haven’t actually achieved that yet).

Second, Technoir‘s system inherently gives freedom of choice to the players. They set their goals, determine their actions, and even demand their outcomes. (Of course, those demands may not always be satisfied.) Despite several years of constant errata and house rules attempting to soften 4th Edition skill challenge’s away from the rigid railroad presented in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, the system is still inherently antithetical to player choice. For example, here’s a key quote from the presentation of skill challenges in D&D Essentials Rules Compendium:

Each skill challenge has skills associated with it that adventurers can use during the challenge. (…) Whatever skills the DM chooses for a skill challenge, he or she designates them as primary or secondary. A typical skill challenge has a number of associated skills equal to the number of adventurers plus two.

Incredibly, skills that players want to use that the DM hasn’t pre-approved can never be considered primary skills and are automatically considered inferior (they can count for no more than one success and may not count for successes at all). By default, 4th Edition tells you that ideas originating from the players are not to be treated with the same respect as ideas originating from the DM. It’s hard-coded right into the rules.

The two approaches really are night and day: Technoir trusts the creativity of the players. 4th Edition shackles the creativity of the players.

Apocalypse World is both a roleplaying game and a really intense primer on D. Vincent Baker’s approach to GMing a campaign. In fact, the primer is so intense that it’s been baked right into the ruleset at a really primal level.

First, it says this about what a roleplaying game is all about:

Roleplaying is a conversation. You and the other players go back and forth, talking about these fictional characters in their fictional circumstances doing whatever it is that they do. Like any conversation, you take turns, but it’s not like taking turns, right? Sometimes you talk over each other, interrupt, build on each others’ ideas, monopolize. All fine.

This is one of the better and most evocative explanations of how you play an RPG.

And then Baker tells you that the rules of Apocalypse World are going to “mediate the conversation”:

The particular things that make these rules kick in are called moves. The rule for moves is to do it, do it. In order for it to be a move and for the player to roll dice, the character has to do something that counts as that move; and whenever the character does something that counts as a move, it’s the move and the player rolls the dice.

Usually its unambiguous, but there are two ways that sometimes they don’t line up, and it’s your job as MC to deal with them.

First is when a player says only that her character makes a move, without having her character actually take any such action. For instance: “I go aggro on him.” Your answer should be “cool, what do you do?” “I seize the radio by force.” “Cool, what do you do?” “I try to seduce him.” “Cool, what do you do?”

Second is when a player has her character take action that counts as a move, but doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t intend it to be a move. For instance: “I shove him out of my way.” Your answer then should be “cool, you’re going aggro?” “I pout. ‘Well if you really don’t like me…'” “Cool, you’re trying to manipulate him?” “I squeeze way back between the tractor and the wall so they don’t see me.” “Cool, you’re acting under fire?” The rule for moves is if you do it, you do it, so make with the dice.”

This really got under my skin (in a good way) because it forced me to look at RPG mechanics from a fresh perspective. What Baker is describing is not radically different from the way I’ve always played RPGs: We have a conversation about the characters and the world they’re living in, and when it’s appropriate we interpret the actions of the characters mechanically and use the mechanics of the game to resolve the outcome of those actions.

But what Baker puts front and center is this: You play a game by making moves. And here are the moves that you can make in this game. Bam.

MASTER OF CEREMONIES

It’s a subtle shift in perspective. But where Apocalypse World really gets up in your face about it is when Baker gets to the rules for the Game Master (which Apocalypse World refers to as the Master of Ceremonies): He gives the MC a specific list of moves. And then he tells the MC that this is all he’s allowed to do.

Wait… what?

Yup. He gives you this list of moves:

• Separate them
• Capture someone
• Put someone in a spot
• Trade harm for harm (as established)
• Announce off-screen badness
• Announce future badness
• Inflict harm (as established)
• Take away their stuff
• Make them buy
• Activate their stuff’s downside
• Tell them the possible consequences and ask
• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost
• Turn their move back on them
• Make a threat move (from one of your fronts)
• After every move: “What do you do?”

And then he says, “Whenever there’s a pause in the conversation and everyone looks to you to say something, choose one of these things and say it. They aren’t technical terms or jargon: “announce future badness”, for instance, means think of something bad that’s probably going to happen in the future and announce it. “Make them buy” means the thing they want? They’re looking to you to tell them they can have it? If they want it, they have to buy it. And so on.”

If you’ve got a lot of experience GMing, this may prove tough for you. (Since it’s likely to be a departure from your normal methods of GMing.) It was tough for me. But I really, strongly encourage you to give it a try. Not because you need to completely change the way you normally GM (although you might end up doing that), but because this is what will make Apocalypse World sing for you.

In general, Baker is pushing two things here: First, make whatever the PCs are doing interesting. Second, use aggressive pacing.

In other words, don’t rush the players or cut them off. But if they’re trying to do something and need feedback from the game world to make it happen, then it’s the MC’s responsibility to make that feedback interesting. (They’re trying to sneak into a building? Put them on the spot. They’re trying to find directions to the Blue Lagoon? Make ’em buy.) And, similarly, if the players have run out of things they want to do (i.e., things they find interesting), then the MC’s job is to aggressively introduce something interesting (either by bringing something interesting onscreen or by fast-forwarding to the next interesting bit).

By limiting the MC’s input to this specific list of moves, Baker is not only making them explicitly another player at the table (with a specific role to play just like all the other players have their specific roles to play); he’s also forcing the MC to make PC actions interesting and to aggressively pace the session.

Baker also introduces a list of Principles which the MC is to follow, and which end up coloring how the MC uses their moves. Most of these Principles are rock solid GMing advice, but there are a couple key ones that factor heavily in understanding how Apocalypse World is supposed to be played:

• Make your move, but never speak its name.
• Make your move, but misdirect.
• Look through crosshairs.

“Make your move, but never speak its name” is fundamentally similar to the guidelines Baker gives for player moves: You don’t take your moves in Apocalypse World by saying the name of the move; you describe what happens in the game world.

“Make your move, but misdirect” builds on this principle. The effect of the move doesn’t occur because you chose the move; the effect is caused by something in the game world. (For example, the MC may choose the move “separate them”. But as far as the players are concerned, their characters have been separated because the plane they were flying in has just been chopped in two and they’re stuck in opposite halves.)

“Look through the crosshairs” basically makes it clear that you need to keep the stakes high and the pace intense. As Baker describes it: “Whenever your attention lands on someone or something that you own — an NPC or a feature of the landscape, material or social — consider first killing it, overthrowing it, burning it down, blowing it up, or burying it in the poisoned ground. An individual NPC, a faction of NPCs, some arrangement between NPCs, even an entire rival holding and its NPC warlord: crosshairs. It’s one of the game’s slogans: There are no status quos in Apocalypse World.”

DIGGING DEEPER

What really makes Apocalypse World tick, though, is that everything I’ve written here is a vast simplification. Or, rather, it’s merely the core of the game.

For example, every player will be playing a specific character type. And each character type has their own list of custom moves (expanding what they can do while also focusing their gameplay).

Similarly, the MC creates fronts (representing various forms of active and passive opposition in the game world). And each of these fronts, just like the character types, have their own custom moves which also expand the MC’s list of available moves at any given time (while also focusing gameplay).

There are rules for your crap, rules for crafting, rules for psychic brain-fuckery, rules for ruling settlements, rules for running gangs… Rules for all kinds of stuff. And it’s all evocative and provoking and awesome.

Baker says this towards the beginning:

The game takes quite a few sessions to play, so choose friends with space in their schedules for a commitment. I don’t figure it’s much of a game until 6 sessions, and it can go much longer.

And that’s pretty much true. It’s a fun little game for a one-shot; but it seems to be shaping up for a very slick campaign. (Although I’m less sure about “friends with space in their schedules for a commitment”. I think it might be interesting to let the game loose at an open table: Most of the characters are drifters anyway, so it shouldn’t be too hard to aggressively frame a given session so that it focuses on just the characters present.)

In case I’m being unclear: I’m saying you should check this one out. It’s one of the best bundles of GMing advice I’ve read in a long time, and it packs that advice right into a really intense (and really fun) game system.

Style: 5
Substance: 5