Invisible cuts #10 - A short glimpse into the world of temple punks
Ritual Cuts playlist, War of the rings, the card game review + more
A short glimpse into the world of Temple Punks
The Dim Resort is a caravan of survivors and adventurers from The Eye, a hostile barren landscape that sits atop ruins of an older world. This lifestyle has made its inhabitants hard and strong, ambitious and ruthless. Still, to live in packs is the best way to see another sunrise. They discovered ancient magics and technologies deep in the underground ruins, which they call Temples. Distorted folk roam, hungry, in the deep. Only fools would dare delve there. Good thing that the caravan houses many of them.
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You can choose the Crow or the Pixie as companions for your delve, along with 4 other ones. These strange yet friendly metallic creatures, once bonded with a person, will assist them in any way they can. Was the old world filled with these? Did they fail the Distorted Folk found beneath?
You can buy Temple Punks as print&play solo ttrpg/roll & write hybrid on itch.io now.
or on our official site.
Mood
As I’m gearing up for new Ritual Cuts content, I decided to make a moodboard made of songs to accompany the next creations. I think it serves well also as a tapissery of what I enjoy and how the darkness of certain themes can be explored in different ways.
My problem with some historical war games.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to add the narrative aspects of TTRPGs to board games, ignoring a part of board gaming that already has a very heavy thematic and story-driven component to their gameplay : war games.
After a few playthroughs of Maria, I felt the idea was fascinating: exploring history through small skirmishes that would allow for a butterfly effect in the causalities of modern politics. I had similar feelings with Quartermaster General. Both games’ designs showcased history as their main mechanisms and strategic intentions. Germans have a huge deck in Quartermaster General, mimicking their power and versatility in the region. Russia has a lot of armies. America is king of the waters.
I’m not sure what these games are asking from you though. Do you repeat history? Should you roleplay your faction? Oftentimes I feel these games try to be educational but in stead, to me, feel revisionist or heavy-handed and pandering in their winks. Each player at the table is set in a path the game doesn’t tell them about until you get to the ending board state with very minor alterations to real life history. An empty promise of a game that results in paint-by-numbers where your choices are minimized to the greater constraint and weight of history.
I tend to stay away from these games, now. As with my last review of Wolves, board games that ask you to play with an intented tone just don't vibe with me. There’s a lot of these historical games that present similarly to me : they constrain your gameplay to remind you how impossible a situation was yet try to make it ‘easy’ enough on you to not change history.
Enter War of the rings, the card game
Now let’s apply of all of the above criticisms, but to a fictional reality. War of the Rings Card Game (WRCG), designed by Ian Brody, who is also behind the Quatermaster General series, masterfully recreates the books into gameplay, so much so, that the game kind of plays itself as you sit there and watch things happen.
Now I have to say, personally I don’t understand what it means to like a derivative product just because I’m a fan of it. I love a lot of things. But you won’t see me buy everything that wears the flags of my favorite IPs. I say this because the first argument I hear for WRCG is that fans of the books will love how they weave the story into gameform, as if there was an inherent gain to doing this. To some it might be, I guess.
To me, WRCG is a clogged up slug of a game that lacks any sense of pace even though you are following almost beat per beat the story of lord of the rings, while having small side-skirmishes that might be enjoyed by fans of the series (oh wow smeagol is fighting gollum that’s funny). The game feels proud of its accomplishments and as I was playing I couldn’t help but feel the prentention ooze out of every moment a player realized the set path they were on. In the same vein as some of the wargames mentioned above, Shadow players, who the story depict as overwhelmingly strong and powerful, draw more cards than others and thus have a lot more strategy to develop. The good guys had 3 cards per turn, and they had very few decisions to make. I’m sure the designer feels witty about this, but it does not translate to a good gaming experience, to me.
Technically, the card play is underwhelming and has a lot of RNG. In your 30-or-so card decks, you have cards you can only play in the early game, some in the mid game and some in the late-game. They have specific moments of play and they come with a pre-ordained script : the good guys win the early game and the shadow players overwhelm the late game. As Shadow players you spend the first half of the game forsaking enemy cards (removing cards from the game) until their already famished ressources become impossible to strategize with. As the good guys you pray for good card draw that lets you win enough paths and battlegrounds to make a 10 point gap before you get to paths 7 through 9. That’s it.
The game gets worse as you search through the rulebook for certain interactions, never to find them. You can’t design a game like this that tries so much to mimic MTG yet avoids to think about puzzling corner cases. The iconography is confusing and the graphic design makes things even more confusing.
Rails in gaming are important. Signposts of where to go and how to approach things. In TTRPGs, they are often looked at negatively if they are enforced too strongly, as they remove player choice. In WRCG, the rails are more like the walls of a maze that tower over you as can’t help but follow the steps laid for you. If you make a choice other than what is intended, you’ll lose yourself until you’re back on the only path to the end of the game.
3/10
Cool shit from the internet
So this week I’ll post music I normally don’t gravitate naturally towards, but, I’ve been binging Atlanta. Holy shit is Atlanta good. The depth of this show and its memery is a must-see in these times of static. This song is from a great moment in season 3 (my favorite season?).
Its quality rivals other great FX series like Bear and Louie, which are also quite comfortably sitting at the top of my toplist.
I kind of made it a point to not have any metal or metal-adjacent music in my Ritual Cuts playlist mentioned above. I think the tabletop would benefit from a tad more BOUNCE.
BUT.
THIS TRACK THO. I knew nothing of this band and I’m quite distanced from the metal scene. A bit like the TTRPG and board game scenes, there seems to be a lot of cool kids playing gatekeeper. But I’ve always had my favorites that kind of stem from my years listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor ( I am from montreal and GY!BE is an imposed religion) and other post-rock, to deafhaven, to screamcore, etc. I also toured with a death metal outfit when I was younger as the video guy ( I was real shit at it) and thus understand the DROP and subsequent HEADBANG. And holy fuck does this one have a drop. To me this track by Disembodied Tyrant and Synestesia shares a lot more with Venetian snares, Igorr and industrial than other death metal I’ve heard. It’s actually kind of corny. But it’s also been on repeat for a few days.
A meteor for post-post modern life
I watched the eclipse for 90 seconds. I looked at aurora borealis from the sunstorm. And yet, something that happens every day has captured my imagination and attention in an even more profound way. To me this is an accidental artpiece. A young girl being online and conforming to the new social norms by ‘going live’ and her absolute awe at the wanton and uncaring potential destruction illuminating her like it was a god falling is just… beautiful. Impossible even.
News and ramblings
New collaboration announced! I’m joing the amazing Pawel Kicman on a second project together for his new Superpowered Borg-ish book Hellpower! Save it on backerkit!