Shill Reviewer Thinks a Terrible, Fake RPG is Better Than a Terrible, Actual RPG
Really quick: if you want something similar to Dungeons & Dragons, but which focuses on fun, usability, and quality—yet isn't grossly overpriced—as opposed to social justice progressive politics, propaganda, and irrational, obsessive hatred over mere disagreements and arbitrary thought crime violations, check out Dungeons & Delvers.
A link to this video was posted in the (a?) Facebook OSR group, where self-professed Professor Dungeon Master, aka Dan DeFazio, asserts that Index Card RPG is better than Dungeons & Dragons. Granted, if we're talking 5th Edition that sets the bar pretty low, but even so: is Index Card RPG up to the task?
Naaah.
The video is twelve minutes long, eleven-and-a-half minutes longer than it needed to be, and it's less a review, more a shill and hack gushing over Index Card RPG, which isn't so much a roleplaying game—and so I'll be omitting the RPG part henceforth—as it is a poorly designed, cheaply produced board game deliberately mis-marketed as one.
Dan's summary of Index Card being a "streamlined version of D&D" isn't merely an exaggeration, it's an outright lie, unless you consider any game with D&D stats, hit points, and a d20 mechanic a "version of D&D". But, were you to accept his overly generous categorization, just what does Index Card "streamline"?
In his words: character creation, combat, movement, encounter creation, and "plotting out your stories". How does it achieve this? By watering them down, or abstracting them to the point where they become virtually meaningless, of course. And I'll get to those when Dan bothers to, because I don't own the game, and so am just responding to his grossly overstated, sleazy sales-spiel in the same order in which he deems most proper to showcase this shameful schlock.
He starts out showing off the cards from the "essentials deck", an obvious place to start when reviewing an alleged RPG. I know, were I to talk about an actual roleplaying game like Dungeons & Dragons, I'd focus on Dungeon Tiles first and foremost. That's what you're there for, right? Not making a character and exploring dungeons, overcoming challenges in search of treasure and other rewards. No, you're here for the terrain accessories. The cheaper the better, and in that regard Index Card still manages to disappoint.
The deck consists of 120 cards featuring some amateur art that, based off the video, are intended to be used in place of other terrain, like Dwarven Forge and the aforementioned Dungeon Tiles, or even just drawing out the map yourself. But unlike normal terrain, the kind you might build or buy from an actually professional company that prioritizes quality to, well, any extent, it lacks precision. You're just supposed to lay them out wherever, however, giving you a very vague-at-best sense of where things are.
Movement between the cards reminds me of playing something like Zombicide: Black Plague, except Index Card's cards are somehow less precise and look far worse. It's pretty pathetic to watch Dan try and justify their use, convince you that they're revolutionary, or even useful, in any way. The entire time he fiddled with them I wondered: why even bother? If you don't own or want to use even halfway decent terrain, tiles, or draw the map yourself? Just go purely theatre of the mind.
Is it really hard to say you're in a room, and there's some cells over here, a bridge leading out over there, and a skeleton on the floor? Sounds a lot faster than setting up a table just to throw down cards. Plus you aren't limited by what's on them. This is the main reason I like drawing on a battle map: I have full control. I don't have to "settle" for whatever terrain I happen to have.
Or cards with bad art.
In his depressing example, the wizard is guarding a door which looks like it's in near the middle of the room, the barbarian is guarding a bridge leading out, the fighter checking the skeleton, and the rogue is dealing with jail cells. There's no sense of space, which Dan says isn't important, even though it is, because knowing how big rooms are, where things are, and finer details not only helps make the imagined world seem more real, it also helps you make informed decisions.
Beyond vague locations (ie, bridge here and jail there), you get nothing. Are there any pillars in the room? Statues? Reliefs? Markings on the wall? Mosaics? What about scratches? Blood spatter? Footprints? Dust? Rubble? Things for the players to ask questions about and act upon. For example: are there footprints? What do they look like? Where do they go? These details can also breathe more life into the world, make it seem like less of a, well, shitty board game.
Instead, you put down cards, and they know that, beyond the cards there is nothing. Just bounce from card to card spamming checks—if you so choose—until the GM tells you what's there. Don't bother looking through a pile of rubble, because there's no rubble card. And if there was, you'd know there's something there.
Continuing with Dan's pitiful sales pandering, goblins suddenly, magically spawn on the bridge card:
So there were goblins here. In an actual RPG, players could have asked questions about the environment, looked for clues: footprints, goblin poop, strange glyphs written in blood, etc. They could have heard the goblins approaching. Set up an ambush or trap, find a way to bottleneck them. Close the door, if there was one to close. But, nope, they're suddenly on the bridge card (what's beyond it?), so now everyone can bounce over and spam attacks.
Dan desperately tries to emphasize the speed of setup and storage as a selling point, really the only selling point, if you could even call it that. Because that's all that matters, right? Why home cook a meal when you can just get fast food? Yeah, it's not as good or even as healthy, but who cares: it's fast. And that should define all your decisions. I'm sure he's a real hit with the ladies.
So don't learn how to draw maps. Don't check out structure floorplans, learning something new in the process, growing in some capacity. And if you already know this stuff? Stop. Buy this trash board game with its trash cards and just scatter them about. Pretend that's the same as hand-drawing your own map, with everything precisely where and how you envisioned it. Pretend that it's the same as crafting something of your own, something you can show off, use, take some pride in.
Or, screw the cards. They're a very cheap and cumbersome gimmick. A crutch. Yeah, it might take all of a few minutes to learn how to draw lines on graph paper, to check one of a billion fantasy map keys to see how others draw doors, tables, pillars, etc, but it's fun, and the only limitations are your imagination and how many sheets of paper you're willing to tape together.
But Dan's a shill. He wants you to play this. To constrain your creativity and potential to a deck of cards, and so next struggles to further justify them with a "mine cart chase". How does he do this? By demonstrating how the cards can be used in a unique way to convey a satisfyingly chaotic sequence where you have to beat back pursuers, switch tracks (maybe even switch carts), avoid getting hit by another cart on a more or less parallel track, and then invariably have to stop it before you crash into a wall or careen over a cliff?
Of course not. This is a poorly designed board game. Dan just drops a mine cart card on the table, puts some figures on the card, and goblins next to it:
Really compelling visual, right? There's no tracks, and as before no sense of space. It's just a fucking card on a table, and it's as retarded as it is hilarious, watching this guy try so hard to defend them. No, it's great: plop a card down and pile on minis, because just telling the players they're in a mine cart being chased by goblins? Well that's just too hard to imagine, they need that card with a badly drawn cart on it, otherwise they're lost!
"Where are people in the mine cart? What's their exact position? We don't need to know that."
Yes you do, you shady shill. If you're being chased, the guys in the back are most likely to get attacked, and the guys in the front are the ones likely watching out for things, like levers to switch the tracks, or dangers up ahead. Have you even watched a mine cart scene from a movie?
As bad as that was, the example for "inventing a town" might be worse. Dan just phones it in, like everything else, really, throwing down a road card, and then some other cards with buildings around it. There's no indication of how big the town is, the rest of the houses. It's a road with five building cards nearby, all so you can go, "Oh, the cleric is going to the temple", and then put your cleric figure on the temple card.
Why are you even bothering? Are you so incompetent that you need cheap, insipid cards to know specific locations in a town? Was it too hard to just write those on a piece of paper? The location and distance doesn't even matter, right? And if speed is the only qualifier then just listing these places is a lot faster than going through your stupid card deck to find buildings.
But I guess without the cards, you can't put your little figures on them. You need that visual aid of your miniature on a worthless card; how else will you remember that you're at the blacksmith or alchemist's shop?
Ah, the pinnacle of fake-rpg innovation. Could it be even better? Oh, yes it can, because you can just shuffle the cards around and pretend you've invented a new town.
Which he does.
It's the exact same locations, just in different spots. What's it called? Who runs it? How many people live there? How big is it? What does it export? Who cares about that, just throw down some cards so the players can put minis on them, because they're so retarded they won't remember where they are apparently.
"The cards enable you to play way more world in less space."
Actually it's less world in about the same amount of space. I can draw a map of a town, with roads and buildings, mark specific locations (all without being tethered to whatever impractical cards I have), and it'll take up the same amount of space, but show off more detail. It'll be unique. Ditto for the dungeon map, unless I'm already drawing all of my individual rooms and feature at 3 x 5 squares.
I'm running a megadungeon right now, where the party is exploring Dracula's castle and trying to slay him, get their ancestral loot back (they're all dwarves), and I'm just trying to imagine how much of a clusterfuck it would be to try and make this out with those cards. That is, assuming there's one with a barbican gate, several towers, a balcony, a courtyard, a random hall with a dead body in it, a guard room with lots of beds, a stable (not a building, but a room within a castle), ballroom, storage room for instruments, etc.
I'm guessing there isn't, and if there was there's no way it could all be arranged in a manner where it would look anything like an actual castle. But that doesn't bug Dan: after all, who cares about space? Or placement. That "takes too long". You've obviously got better things to do, and it's not like there are multiple board games that could possibly deliver the shallow pseudo-RPG experience that Index Card card can, that have you go into dungeons, move via zones, have a simplistic "leveling" system, and find loot.
Right?
And why would you want anything more? It's apparently too much effort to draw a map of a town, show it to your players, mark the important spots, and just have them tell you where they go. Then store the map so that you remember these things later. Have some consistency. Flesh out the NPCs. Maybe look back fondly and recall the good times you had with it. Naaah. Settle. Be content. Do less than even the bare minimum.
"You don't have to worry about making terrain, buying terrain, storing terrain, setting up terrain, cleaning up terrain."
Again, just eat shitty fast food, so you don't have to worry about buying ingredients, storing ingredients, prepping ingredients, cleaning up ingredients. You also don't have to worry about learning anything, like what villages might look like or how they function. Where they might be built, what the interior of a medieval house looks like. You also don't have to worry about learning to draw.
So just stop. Be static. Don't grow, in any capacity. Instead, do as little as possible. Work a routine, joyless job so you can buy someone else's bland, overpriced, overhyped trash game and trite gimmicks. Because if you bothered to learn the basics? How to draw your own maps, or draw in general? Put in the effort to read an actual RPG with some meat on it (or something resembling an equipment list)? Well then you won't need to settle for this garbage, now would you?
It's kind of funny to look back at older roleplaying games. Actual ones, I mean. Compare them to most of the newer shit and see the decline in content and quality, how things get more and more abstracted and excised in the name of "simplicity" and expediency, when it's really players getting gradually dumber and lazier. They don't want to read, to work, and they certainly don't want to lose. They lack patience. They just want the rewards, and so leveling up is faster, death is harder.
And the so-called creators aren't any different, so you get something like Index Card (and also Mork Borg and Troika). It looks cheap, rushed, sloppy. It lacks depth and creativity. It lacks anything resembling logic and coherency. It doesn't hold up to any amount of scrutiny.
I get the sense that this newer crop of crap is intentionally bad. The creators don't care: they're inept narcissists that just want money and attention, so excrete whatever they think they can get away with, charging way more than it's worth, and lying about how it's just "rules-lite" or "simplified", which really just means that it's incomplete.
Anyway, what was Professor prattling on about, again?
Oh, he's still trying to justify the cards as a good or even useful thing. He runs at schools and doesn't want to "lug terrain" back and forth. Well, the obvious solution is to just not bring any of that unnecessary crap in the first place. Just do pure theatre of the mind. Maybe bring a battle map and draw as you go? A small box of minis that you'll definitely be using, and just use dice for everything else?
Nah, cards. Gotta have cards so, and this is another example right out of the video, if the rogue falls in a pit trap? You can put down a pit trap card and drop the rogue mini on top. Whew! Crisis averted. How would the players have ever known that the rogue fell into a pit trap otherwise? Sure, he could just tell them, and he would have to anyway, but would they really know what's going on without an irrelevant visual aid?
Nearly a quarter of the way into the video and he finally gets to the book. If the cards were that blatantly pointless, can't wait to see what the rest of Index Card is like. He doesn't start with mechanics, or anything starts with the character sheet, stating that "if it looks familiar, that's because it is".
Get it? It's got D&D stats so it's like D&D, right? You don't roll stats, but spend points, and there are no negatives. Just like D&D. And all weapons inflict the same damage. Just like D&D. You also don't level up. JUST LIKE D&D. Instead you get loot. Just li—, well, okay, that sounds like D&D, though loot doesn't replace character growth. It certainly sounds like they "streamlined" character progression. Wonder what it's like, playing a game where your character never grows in any manner, and only your gear matters.
Sounds awful. It reminds me of Super Dungeon Explore, which also has coins you can spend, no levels, and only the loot matters. Different is that it's a board game with a clear video game vibe, not pretending to be anything more, so smacking hearts and potions out of monsters isn't jarring. But Index Card sounds worse than other board games, like Zombicide and Descent, which have level up mechanics and even something representing a campaign mode.
So Index Card is less of an RPG (not that I would categorize it as such) than board games. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if there were card games with more RPG elements.
"Everything takes place in turns. That way you never skip anyone, and everyone gets equal attention."
Oh, okay, so like every game. I'm surprised that Dan doesn't highlight the action economy and resolution mechanic as something that's innovative and deserving of praise, even though it's basically what you'd expect from a d20 game. Well, okay, it's actually worse.
There's something called effort, which is basically damage by another name, and apparently covers everything you do. If you attack a monster, you deal "weapon effort" to them (ie, damage), and if you want to break down a door you're basically spamming skill checks to roll an effort die, breaking through when you deplete its totally-not-hit points.
How is this better than just chopping through the door? Better than a DM saying, well, yeah, you can damage it so...let's say it takes you 1d4 minutes to get through (or even x minutes minus Strength mod). How is this better than making a Strength check to kick it open? How is this better than saying that you need x successes to achieve something?
It's not, but Dan wants you to think it is. Because it's slightly different and he's a shameless shill.
He also glosses over some key parts of the task resolution system (wonder why?), but you can see it in the video.
When doing something requires a die roll, you roll a d20, add a modifier, and try to meet-or-beat a DC, here called a target, presumably in an attempt to make it sound like it's something new. It is, but not in a good way: unlike a normal, actual RPG, where difficulty numbers are based on how hard the task is, here all DCs are the same.
Well, except when they aren't.
If a task is "easy", it's supposed to always go down by 3, and if it's "hard" it's supposed to always go up by 3.
So, here, an "easy" task could feasibly have a DC so high that it's almost impossible to beat. Even though it's easy. And a "hard" task could also be trivially easy to achieve. Makes sense, right?
Worse, the GM is supposed to display the current universal-but-not-really DC where everyone can see it, arbitrarily adjusting it on the fly, but making sure everyone knows what it is at all times. Sounds great for whiny, entitled casuals that need to know the odds before doing anything. Because if you want to maintain tension, make sure everyone knows their exact odds. It's like Han Solo said: always tell me the odds.
What's disappointing about this—besides everything—is that things can only be easy, normal, or hard. You can't double or triple up on "easy". It's a toggle. So, if you have loot that makes something easy and fail? There's no benefit. It's already easy. The DC isn't going down another 3 points. They also don't seem to simply cancel each other out, so if you try something hard, just try it again to make it easy, effectively reducing the DC by 6 points.
It makes more sense to just peg tasks to a DC based on difficulty, with easy things having a DC of, say, 5, normal 10, hard 15, very hard 20, etc. A sensible scale, and have the modifier hinge on the character's natural ability, skill, and any relevant tools that can be employed. Not this nonsense, arbitrary, "everything is DC x, but I might bump it up or down anyway".
It's like a skill check equivalent of THAC0, just without flexibility.
At the effort section, the die you roll is based arbitrarily on whether you're using something. If you aren't using a weapon or tool, it's 1d4. Weapons are d6, except for guns for some reason, which are d8. All magic is d10, also for no particular reason: I guess all spells do the same damage. Same for plasma weapons and lasers.
So dagger? Short sword? Arming sword? Longsword? d6. Ditto for throwing a rock, using a hand crossbow, or a longbow. All the same. Barely above your bare hands, because that makes sense. You use a d4 if you're just relying on your wits. I guess you need to be consulting a book or something to bump this up to a d6, even if the book contains information you already know.
It's all a bunch of arbitrary nonsense, like the hearts, which Professor says "is a really innovative concept" but then follows it up with "we'll get back to that later". But why wait? Let's talk about it now, get it out of the way because it's not innovative, or even complex. It's actually blatantly counterintuitive, so you can tell who the retards are by anyone claiming that this is "a good thing". Here it is:
One heart symbol equals 10 hit points.
That's it. That's the whole fucking thing.
So, if something has two hearts, it has 20 hit points. If something has eight, it has 80.
While I suspected from the start that Dan was a shill, moron, or both, this cements it. This is not innovative. Having to count hearts and then convert it to a number that could have been there in the first place (and taken up less space), is not innovative. It's an extra step. A useless extra step, all to mislead you into thinking that this half-assed board game offers anything of value.
Worse, it's incredibly unintuitive, because it's impossible to tell what it means without context. Just imagine if other things were indicated this way? Where Speed had footprints, and each footprint meant 5 feet. Or if Armor Class used armor icons to represent 5 points of AC, and a shield to represent 1, so you'd have a monster with three armor icons and two shield icons, and have to translate that to 17.
Movement is basically D&D but lazily reworked: you can move a distance and do something, or double move and do nothing.
I think the dying part is the only thing that could remotely be considered innovative, and that's because you roll to see how many rounds you have left. It doesn't account for damage or toughness so, still executed poorly, but it's at least something that I don't recall seeing before. So, only a slight negative.
What is a big negative—among many, many negatives—are hero coins. These remind me mechanically of Action Points from 3rd Edition, but are somehow even stupider. The GM gives you hero coins, you can only have one, and you can cash it out for a re-roll or +1d12 to a roll. I already find these little storygame mechanics completely nonsensical and hollow, but what makes these worse is that you can pass them around to other players.
In this regard it reminds me of 5th Edition's inspiration, which was also phenomenally retarded and didn't make any sense. Wonder if that's where the mechanic was stolen from, but the author just wanted to go the extra mile and make it worse.
Dan speeds through the race section, and I can see why: they're just pairs of stat bonuses. Playing a human? +1 INT and CHA. Playing a dwarf? +1 STR and CON. No traditional racial features, like being better at working with stone, better able to see in the dark, resistance to poison. Nah, just a couple bonuses and you're good.
There are six classes. Starting abilities are...okay, I suppose. Some of them, anyway. The hunter can be a Trap Expert, but there's no explanation for how it works, the time it takes, supplies used. You just can set traps. All the time. Instantly. Forever.
The starting loot is where it breaks down. Going off the video, fighters can have a "weapon gem", which is a "special counterweight" that gives your weapon +2 damage. Because balanced weapons inflict more damage, as opposed to being easier to use or more accurate, yeah? You can also have a shield glove, which makes it so that your shield doesn't take up space (oh god, does this game also have a casual grade nonsense encumbrance system?), or a battle standard, which for some reason makes any roll easy.
I just imagine a fighter waving it around while a wizard is trying to learn something, or a rogue is sneaking around. It's so absurdly retarded that, even for Index Card, I'm surprised no one pointed this out. Or maybe they don't care, because the entire thing runs on board game logic anyway. It would also explain why you don't just have your character make all this crap. There's nothing magical or particularly unusual about any of it. But then how would you do it? There aren't any rules on making stuff. Spam "crafting effort" rolls? Probably that.
There are also milestone abilities, but Dan doesn't talk about them. There aren't any levels, and they say "choose 1 when awarded by the GM", so guessing it's something you get whenever the GM feels like it. Probably happens pretty often, because I get the feeling that Index Card is for the sort of player that needs a constant stream of rewards, whether or not they make sense. Oh, and also constant mental stimulation and emotional validation. Just a hunch.
The gear section is predictably shallow. A few packs that mention preset gear that isn't explained elsewhere, two types of armor and shields, weapons that are all incorrectly described. Nothing has a weight, because I'm guessing it's using a lazy ass, nonsense "carry x items" system, because the target audience is too moronic to perform basic math, and nothing even has a price. It's a fucking mess, and it's an intentional mess born of apathy and the need for instant gratification over making something even half-way finished, that can stand up to scrutiny.
The adventurer's pack has a torch. Okay? What does a torch do? It has a jerky and an apple. Why? Does this game even have a hunger mechanic? I'd be surprised. Assuming there is: how much does it cost to buy food, anyway? Oh, the miner's pack has a breather mask: what happens if I don't have one? When should it be used? What does it do? When should it be replaced? How can you, when there's no price, anyway?
Mixed armor garb? It's described as a gambeson so, yeah, calling it mixed armor garb sounds right. It lets you know immediately what it is. Which is a gambeson.
Now if you want to upgrade from your mixed armor garb—not sure how given the lack of prices—you can catapult all the way up to heavy plate and chain armor. Chainmail? You mean that other, far more common type of armor? That wouldn't require specific measurements and lots of time to construct? No, you can't just do that, you also need plates layered over the top.
I love how it's described as cumbersome. Really need to perpetuate the myth that it was this big, bulky heap of metal that was difficult to move in. I also love how it's barely better than the gambe— Sorry, I mean "mixed armor garb".
Wooden shields—ie, shields—are called common shields, while iron shields are described as steel with iron bands. Oh, the inaccuracies born of not giving a shit. Just writing down whatever and not even bothering to skim a Wikipedia article of all things. Shields also use this stupid, overhyped, contrived mechanic where if you get hit, you can choose to have your shield destroyed to completely negate any attack.
This was something people pitched "back in the day" on G+, and for some reason thought it both made sense in any capacity and was...
Anyway, that only applies to "common" shields. Steel-shields-with-iron-bands are unbreakable. Not that metal shields besides the buckler were routinely used. No real need to waste the materials and have all that added weight, but why would anyone bother reinforcing a metal shield with metal bands? The shield is already solid metal, so what's the point of slapping even more metal on top?
The battle axe is described as "a huge chopping weapon of one or two blades". Here's what a battle axe actually looked like:
Bow's use a different, overhyped contrived mechanic for lazy morons that can't count, where you just randomly run out of arrows. Sure, even children can do simple math (unless they went to an Oregon school, in which case they'd probably be upset by this if they could read it), but Index Card is for a...very special category of casual pretender. Frankly I'm surprised they don't just give you infinite arrows, so long as you have a quiver. Or not. Whatever.
The "knight's weapon kit" is just a morning star. Or rather, a flail, neither of which were traditional knight's weapons. It's also not a kit, so why not just call it a morning star? Also, why are knights mentioned in the Alfheim basic loot section, anyway? Get a lot of Norse knights in Alfheim, do you? Why not just stick to traditional Norse weapons? And armor.
For spells Dan seems impressed that each spell is just a couple of lines, like this is an inherently good thing to do. I suppose for him and his audience this is good. Don't want to have to read too much. Or at all. That just gets in the way of throwing cards and hopping minis around:
I'm also sure that all the spells are fully explained. I'm sure somewhere it specifies the range of Arn's Hex and Lightning Bolt. And elsewhere it will state whether Growth Ray affects gear worn and/or carried. What sort of damage flammable objects suffer after being ignited by Fire Missile. What happens if you fire the missile at a flammable object a creature is carrying? If you can move horizontally via Levitation, is there a weight limit?
I'm sure this is all clarified elsewhere, that everything was given the necessary attention to avoid confusion and obvious questions. Maybe not here, where it would make sense, but somewhere in the book, yeah? This is, after all, the third iteration of this fake RPG.
Dan claims that there are a bunch of settings in the back, but judging by the first few pages of Warp Shell and everything I've seen thus far, I'm guessing they are all incredibly underwhelming and completely derivative.
A warp shell (which I refuse to all-caps) is a living space ship (so, Farscape) "endowed with nearly limitless psychic power" (you think that will actually be addressed in the setting?), and can fold space and time at will. There's only a few shells left, you must be part of the crew on one, and have a very important mission.
What is this mission? Don't know. The ship does. But you were in cryo sleep for some reason, and the ship cannot directly communicate with you despite its nearly limitless psychic power. Also, why is it en route anywhere? It can fold space and time at will, after all, so why not just teleport there?
He skims through them pretty quickly, only going into any detail about the prehistoric setting, which is to say he shows the absolutely pathetic foraging/hunting table:
 |
| I love that, even though the table tells you to roll a d12, there's still a d12 icon off to the side. |
You can fail a hunting roll, but not a foraging one. The prey can escape, but what does this mean? Do your chances increase the next time? Does it matter what the prey was? You can apparently make clothes from a bear, but not deer. You can find "weird mushrooms", which apparently have no use. Same with poisonous blossoms. You think you'd make poison out of them, help with a hunt. But, no, that's the kind of thinking you do in a real roleplaying game, not this glorified board game shit.
Doesn't matter where you go. Doesn't matter what you do: just roll on the table, casual. Don't bother asking questions, using skills to improve your odds, or affect what you find. You have the exact same chance to find whatever "edible succulents" are, as you do of finding a broken crate or intact chest, which gives you two supply.
What is supply? Nothing. It's an amorphous, undefined blob of abstract points that you spend to do stuff. It's a nebulous, stale game currency, nothing more. So don't bother asking for specifics. The GM would just shrug and say, I don't know: rope? Cloth? You know, stuuuff. In a prehistoric crate. For some reason.
Oh, and apparently eating rats immediately heals you. Doesn't matter how you were injured, what it was. We're operating on board game mechanics, after all, like how in Zombicide eating food and drinking water gives you XP.
Dan is also really pleased with the character generation for the prehistoric setting. Like the superficial cards he plays it up, that you get "randomly generated story paths and oaths". If you were only listening to him, you'd think, damn, must be a lot. Like what I imagine Traveler is like. Of course it's not: there are only six of each, and they're all barely one sentence.
Take Chosen, for example: your people have selected you to save the world.
That's it. That's the entire thing.
Conceptually it's great for the egotistical millennial that I would expect to praise and at least pretend to play this misrepresented board game, but I want to know what you're saving the world from? How are you supposed to go about doing so? This is objectively worse than a "story" that just reads "you want money", because there are all manner of things you can do right off the bat, and it doesn't require the GM to contrive of some apocalyptic threat for you to invariably overcome because "muh story".
None of them are useful, inspiring, or interesting. You don't get any original ideas to run with. They're the kind of bog-standard proto-backgrounds that anyone could come up with, but normal players wouldn't bother because the point is to play the fucking game. Not this one, as there are both board games and actual RPGs that do everything this one does, but better.
Same with the "character abilities" table on the next page. Dan thinks these are "really cool". Like Archer, which gives you double dama— er, I mean effort if you land an easy bow attack. Or cook, which is double the food items you make (does it even tell you how to make food, or why you need it?). Or fisherman, which is double the food or vague, amorphous supply resource when fishing.
Oh, wow, really cool. And you mean to tell me that just one guy came up with all of these? All by himself? Oh, huh...at least one is a repeat: Slayer. That's from the fighter class. Wonder how many of these "really cool" abilities are copied from a previous section? A lot? Probably a lot. I also noticed that one of the loot options, the pommel stone, has the same effect as one of the things a fighter can start with, it's just renamed.
Kind of goes against Dan's statement of "so there's tons of variation to make it unique", which he just says and then immediately moves on to the GM section.
Or rather, he starts to, but while flipping I noticed this:
Be honest: were you expecting sexism in your lazy, derivative indie vanity project? I guess...well, let's just say I'm not surprised. Wonder why Dan didn't feel like showing this off? I also wonder if this is as bad as it gets? If there's not more that Dan has conveniently omitted.
So prehistoric men are "simple" to imagine. Just expendable schmucks doing all the hard work, risking their lives to feed and protect their families, which means obviously the women should have not one, not two, but four perks.
One of them perpetuates the at least debated notion that women have better pain tolerance, apparently allowing them to recover from dying far more often than their "simpler" counterparts. Because allegedly tolerating pain better means you're less likely to die from injuries. They also should get more free stuff (but not the men giving it to them), bring people back from the brink of death more easily, and...something to do with a navigate ability. Can't quite make it out.
And what of the men? Well, given that the page before and after doesn't mention anything, I'm guessing they get fuck all. No bonus to Strength, which would make perfect sense. No bonus when using tools or exerting themselves. Not even a better tolerance to the cold. Nothing. Nadda. Man, could you imagine the reaction were men to get even one perk, no matter how trivial, and women got nothing? But not in the current year: gotta heap stuff on the women and not even give men one single benefit to even slightly offset things.
I guess this is the so-called designer's attempt to depict himself as a "good ally" to all the women-folk, and we all know what that means.
Bleh.
Moving on, Dan thinks the GM section is "one of the best in any game", so at this point I'm of course expecting the worst, and it did not disappoint.
There's a page on how to "plug-in" Index Card's so-called innovations, including just using stat bonuses, because otherwise it "adds a layer of math that can be cumbersome". How? Does the dumbass who wrote this think that players just record their stat rolls, and then checks the book every single time they want to figure out what the bonus is?
Don't forget to use the damage-by-another-name mechanic and apply it to everything, such as prying open a gate or decoding runes. Of course there are no guidelines given, so the die you roll and how much not-damage you need to apply to succeed is up to you. But, we're assured that it will change how players use time, and make tasks more "triumphant".
Because spamming a Decipher Script check to translate some text, 1d6 "damage" at a time until I hit 20 points is waaay more fun than making a single check and having the DM say "okay, after...30 minutes this is what you figure out". Same eventual result, but rolling a bunch of times makes it more fun.
Somehow.
Not really. I'm just rolling more dice. What makes the traditional method far superior, is that you can always interpret the results in a variety of ways. Just meeting the DC might mean you understand only fragments, beating it by 5 means you get more, and 10 means the entire picture. Failure within 5 points could mean you think you have a vague idea what it might about, and in any case failure could just mean you have to hit the books, find someone to translate it for you.
Sure, maybe you luck out and pull it off, but maybe you don't and there's more adventure fodder. I guess what I'm saying is:
Oh, you should also convert HP to hearts, because the difference between "12 HP and 14 isn't that useful to players and adds little to play", and that if you instead set them all to 10, 20, 30, whatever HP "the players never know the difference". So...why bother, then? Oh, because "you save a lot of time and look-up effort on your prep".
Because, what, you think you or the players will memorize the number of hearts a monster has? And is this lazy retard actually claiming that there's more "look-up effort" to writing down 12 as opposed to 10? It's not like everything is done in 5's, so the math might be slightly easier if everything else is in blocks of 10; you're still subtracting various numbers, so there's perhaps a fraction of a time difference between mentally subtracting for 4 from either 12 or 10.
They know it's bullshit. There's no actual benefit to this. They're desperately trying to trick you into thinking it's good, that anything in here is good, really. Oh, it's a "time saver", even though you're effectively wasting that time rounding HP up or down and exchanging it for hearts, which you just have to convert back to numbers, anyway.
If you really wanted to use Hearts, you could just do a wound system, where damage is one heart, or half a heart. Something like that. Keep everything really low, make weapons deal 1, 2, maybe 3 points of damage at a time. Could have even kept the core d20 mechanic in order to save time pretending to innovate. It's not like your audience expects much, or anything, really.
Next Dan talks about "the three T's", which is timers, threats, and treats.
To clarify, timers are some invented danger that you have to pull out of your ass. You roll a d4, put it in plain sight so all the players can see and know that they have that many rounds before something happens. Also, you only do it the one time. Can't surprise your players. Tension? Who needs that: if it's one thing players want, it's knowing their precise chances of victory, and to not be surprised. Honestly I'm surprised you don't tell the players what the surprise is.
So, this is retarded because it's obvious fake drama. The players know it's coming, and know it's not organic. Something worse happens because the rules say so. It's like a bad horror movie with a constant string of jump scares shoehorned in by an incompetent director that is hoping they'll distract from the terrible plot. Actually, it's worse: it's a bad horror movie with a countdown in the upper right hand corner of the screen, telling you precisely when a jump scare is going to happen.
Threat is specifically cited as "some kind of damage-doer", which limits the scope to something immediate, and you "need" to have one in every room. Which doesn't make any sense and is just going to exhaust normal-brained players. This is obvious DM advice from decades ago, but not every room needs something. Sometimes a room is just a room. If every room must have a danger, then the players expect it. It also ruins any tension or surprise, or even a sense of achievement because you bothered to dig a bit deeper.
Ditto for treat, which is just something good or useful for the players. The funny thing is, the author comes close to realizing the stupidity of putting a contrived timer, danger and something useful in every room. There's a bit where it says "if the player's start asking where's the Treat here, you might be a bit obvious with your designs". Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the inept narcissist handwaives it away by saying "it's still better than a world not worth investigating".
Because if your players don't find something good in every fucking room? Well then they just won't bother, right? They won't bother looking for some random beneficial item or effect that might not even be applicable anymore. This is how selfish, whiny, entitled children behave: without a reward every single time they do anything, no matter how moronic or trivial, they'll just stop, because the reward is the only thing motivating them.
As with dangers, you shouldn't put a "treat" in every room. First, it makes no sense. Second, it will make things predictable. Some rooms should have nothing, some should have dangers, and some should have treasure. Some could also have both a monster and treasure. There's no hard set formula, just make it make sense.
So far, this section of supposedly the "best GMing advice ever" is unsurprisingly turning out to be the worst. It's telling you to constantly push fake story and drama. Nothing happens because it makes sense, but because you're "supposed" to. A never ending stream of "action" and reward to keep players stimulated.
Dan then quickly flips through something called "tuning encounters" which looks like a bunch of encounter setups. There's one called tightrope, which takes place on an elevated walkway, and below there is a monster filled pit. I don't really know what to make of this section, and Dan doesn't elaborate. Looks like standard encounter layouts, which might be useful if you have never played or run a game before.
Dan closes out by again exaggerating Index Card's usefulness, describing both it and the cards as "indispensable", but after enduring his blatantly biased blathering I can't think of a single way in which Index Card is useful, innovative, or better than D&D. Any edition, really. And while I haven't seen the entire book, I'm guessing Dan was showcasing what he believed were the best parts. The highlights. The stuff that he thought would make you jump on board and waste your money. But why would I? Why would anyone?
The core mechanic is worse. Movement is pointlessly abstracted but essentially functions the same. There aren't any levels. The whole effort thing doesn't make any sense and just amounts to more dice rolling to achieve the same results. The loot selection is pathetically banal. Hearts just bog things down. Everything is stripped down and vague under the pretense of "streamlining" things that weren't complicated to begin with.
Is it because everything is so bland and uninspiring that it would be very easy to make third-party content for? To "hack"? Certainly looks like it'd be a lot easier than, say, D&D, even though they apparently let you use all the assets if you're doing DM's Guild trash. Maybe it's because it's somewhat newer than 5th Edition, and so you can act like an elitist hipster? Pretend that you're better because you're playing something different? Certainly it's a smaller market, so maybe you can feel like a big fish despite being in a very small pond?
In a lot of ways it reminds me of Mork Borg. Granted when it comes to layout and art it's more consistent and there's less wasted space, but it's equally mediocre and devoid of passion. And what makes it especially pathetic is that this is effectively the game's third edition over I think a five year span. All that time and this is the best he could do? They say third time's a charm, but this is a strike out. I'd hate to see what the previous editions looks like.
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