Strange Brew is a generic rules framework for table-top roleplaying games. A roleplaying game is a version of "let's pretend". The participants play the parts of fictitious characters for whom they invent adventures. In table-top roleplaying, the participants meet in person and play is conducted mainly via conversation, written notes, and small props, such as dice, cards, maps, or miniatures representing the characters. Other forums for roleplaying include live action roleplaying (LARPs), play-by-mail (PBM), or interactive computer games (MUDs). (See John Kim's Discussion of Formats for Role-Playing Games for more complete descriptions.) Many roleplaying systems combine rules for play with descriptions of a specific universe, setting, or style for the stories. Strange Brew is generic in that it instead aims to let the participants describe and play in their own game worlds and styles. In particular, we aim to allow easy adaptation of extreme, exotic settings, stories, and characters.
The rest of this introduction describes some of the design goals for Strange Brew, and how it compares to other similar games. Also, some terminology is introduced. If you are not interested in these things, skip to the actual game .
The reason for using a generic system is that many roleplayers enjoy tinkering with and experimenting with new and unique fantastic worlds, settings, and situations. Games that make too many assumptions about the nature of the gameworld will frequently need extensive modification to cope with such tinkering. This adjustment of rules can reach the point of absurdity, when it leads to contradictory rules or to elaborate ad hoc lists of rules for every situation as confusing as the tax code. For this reason, many generic roleplaying systems were introduced, such as the Hero Games system, FUZION, GURPS, and FUDGE. Strange Brew uses many ideas taken from these systems, as well as some non-generic systems such as the original DC Heroes and Rolemaster. In particular, Strange Brew tries to incorporate FUDGE's simple mechanics and customizability, GURPS's attention to world creation, and Hero Games's scalability and flexible rules for power creation. By combining these features, we aim to allow roleplaying in very exotic and individualized gameworlds, with strange magic, technology, and inhabitants, by a relatively simple system that doesn't sacrifice flavor or alienate the characters from the gameworld.
Using a generic system should not doom your campaign to genericity. Playing a fantasy thief with a crossbow of slaying should still feel different from playing a cyberpunk rogue with a laser-implant, even if the weapons have equivalent destructive power. In Strange Brew, we try to systematically provide mechanisms for adding flavor to the game. We borrow Hero Games's philosophy of dividing up possible abilities solely by their in-game consequences, so that the basic rules for the two types of attacks would be identical. However, each instantiation of these abilities will also have gameworld definitions that affect their use. We also allow a simple system for designing packages that give suggestions for making a character fit into a culture or background. This is aimed at making the characters seem an organic part of the gameworld, rather than a strange intruder.
As in all generic games, the Strange Brew rules need to be customized to capture specific game worlds, settings, and playing styles. During the presentation, we will give options or indications of how to modify the rules for various effects. We suggest a hierarchical approach lto game design. "Let's pretend" is actually a very sophisticated game, because anything is possible. The group needs to decide and communicate answers to the questions: Who are we? Where are we? What's happening and what are we doing about it? What are possible events, and what options do we have? Since a generic game could happen in any conceivable universe, tell any conceivable story about any conceivable characters, to give a complete specification for the answers to these questions would be the life-work of immortals. Implicitly then, even a generic system needs to rely on common sense, experience, and familiarity with the genre to fill in unspecified details. Strange Brew relies on its players' subjective judgement, but always tries to give precise guidelines for what factors to consider. Strange Brew's rules can be viewed as a specification language for different aspects of role-playing. The rules should not require a game to comply with any real-world or genre characteristics, but a game that is close to a standard genre will involve shorter descriptions. The participants have certain default assumptions about real and fictional life that they can use. For example, they have some familiarity with a Newtonian physics world, human characters, and life on the surface of a small planet circling a yellow star. If all of this is true in a game, there shouldn't need to be major discussion about these aspects. If instead the game revolves around inhabitants of a gas giant cruising at near light speed and experiencing relativistic effects, the differences will need to be made clear to the players. Our general goal is to, as much as possible, only require explicit description of those aspects that are counter-intuitive, going against the players' expectations, or where the players' have no fixed expectations. (Exactly how large is a dragon? It's not the same in Pern, MiddleEarth, and EarthSea.) We also try to use this method hierarchically. Once these differences in physics, magic, or technology are described, they become the new default. Cultures, gizmos, or people that conform to these defaults shouldn't require much additional definition. But those that deviate significantly from the norms (e.g., superheroes) will need greater attention. We try to give opportunities for setting defaults at many levels.
To make what we mean by "many levels" precise, we need to digress into a taxonomy of tasks that are part of roleplaying. Above, we gave a list of types of questions needed to be addressed in a game. Answering each of these questions is a creative task that adds fun to roleplaying. Giving complete answers can also be a lot of work. We can split the process into a number of components. A rules system needs to be chosen, basically a protocol that specifies who is in charge of answering which questions, gives some general terminology to describe worlds, cultures, people, places, objects and events, and gives a mechanism for determing outcomes of game events.
World design answers broad questions about the scope and possibilities of the game.
Setting design fills in the details of the locations where the stories will take place. This gives the scope of the stories from the characters' point of view. Campaign design is planning for a series of related stories. This means determing:
Character design means describing the protagonists of the stories, specifying their abilities, personalities, social connections, goals, and moralities.
Adventure design is the preparation for a fixed story or episode. What are likely events, encounters, dangers, and opportunities?
Most of the above are usually done before the actual game begins. Then there are two other creative processes during the game. Narration is the process of filling in background for the story and introducing information, events and encounters into the plot. An important part of narration is determing the effects of the characters' actions. Role-playing itself is deciding and communicating how the characters react to these elements, both in terms of the actions they take and in terms of how they feel about game events.
All of these activities are fun and creative, but they are also hard work. Not everyone likes to do all parts. For this reason, there are commercially available products for all of the stages of preparation, and many systems include at least a few of these levels. A typical division of labor is that the system or a related product gives the rules and world design, and perhaps some of the setting design as well. Then one of the participants, called the game master or referee is responsible for the rest of the setting design, campaign design, adventure design, and narration. The remaing players are each responsible for designing a character and roleplaying that character.
However, many other possible divisions of labor are possible. In ARIA, players are empowered to do major amounts of world and setting design. In the original D&D, the system included most aspects of campaign design. There are many reasons to encourage player involvement in world and setting design. Also, it is not necessary or even advisable to make all the design decisions before play begins. "Develop-in-play" means purposely leaving aspects unspecified, so that they can be filled in during play. For example, a player might have a vague idea for a character that she wants to role-play for a few games before committing to the details, to "get to know" the character. Or the world designer might not specify the ettiquette or dress code for a culture; the players can improvise these aspects during the games, and it can be recorded for future consistency. (This may actually be less intrusive than describing them in advance. The characters should know these things without thought, whereas a player might have to consult reams of notes to decide how to address a new aquaintance or eat a salad.)
Strange Brew does not dictate any fixed division or order for these tasks. Because of this, instead of addressing the "game master" or "players", we will describe rules as being for the "world designer", "narrator", "roleplayer", etc. The terms need not refer to an individual or to a single stage of the game, but possibly to an on-going process with contributions made by several participants.
One way we envision Strange Brew being played is using a hierarchical design process based on these layers. A world designer might use the system to describe strange physical effects, cultures, phenomena, creatures and technology found in the game world. These descriptions will be passed on to the setting designer (possibly but not necessarily the same person or people), who will describe the individual places, people, creatures, and objects in the vicinity in terms of their similarities or differences with the norms given in world design. These will be passed on to the campaign designer, who will decide general parameters for character design and adventures and pick various options for the rule system to give the right "feel" for the campaign. These general parameters will guide character and adventure design. Then the designed characters and adventures are given to the narrator and roleplayers, and the story begins.
There is no "royal road to fantasy world design"; specifying an exotic universe requires time and imagination. ( Patricia Wrede's questionaire is a good guideline.) However, we hope that once the questions are answered in gameworld terms, it will be relatively easy to translate them into system descriptions that can be passed on. In particular, we hope it will be generally simple to translate detailed fictional worlds, e.g., MiddleEarth, into Strange Brew mechanics. Hopefully, we'll give some examples later.
If the game is used in this fashion, one could think of it as a "meta-system" for producing genre and world specific role-playing games with consistent and similar mechanics. GURPS is an example of an existing game that is basically packaged in this way. Its popularity is based largely on a series of supplements that translate different fictional worlds into GURPS mechanics. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a published procedure for how to do this on one's own. Each fictional world has a few rules that are world-specific and seem to be designed on an ad hoc basis. Steve Jackson Games may well have a fixed procedure for designing world-specific advantages and technology, but it is not "open source".
Besides many different parts of role-playing, there are many different styles of play. The newsgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy has collectively identified three basic styles, representing different reasons people enjoy role-playing. These styles are called : dramatist, gamist, and simulationist; and the styles emphasize the entertainment value of the story; the excitement of competition; and the experience of ``living'' in a gameworld, respectively. (This is a gross over- simplification; John Kim's rec.frp.advocacy FAQ gives a more detailed explanation.) There are other classification systems available as well.
It is not always possible to make a game that pleases all types of role-players. My own leaning is towards the dramatist end, and that may influence these rules. However, as a generic system, Strange Brew tries to be neutral towards playing style. We will point out certain alternatives or modifications that might make the game more appealing to one of these styles, while less appealing to others. The campaign designer can choose options that are the best fit with the participants' preferred styles.
Please send comments, questions, and examples to: russell@cs.ucsd.edu. Thank you for examining Strange Brew .