Alternate Rules

You can think of these as stylistic options. When you play any role-playing game, you as a group decide on a general tone, a theme, perhaps a genre. The choices you make affect the style of your game: is it funny? action-packed? violent? gritty? As I’m sure is obvious, these different choices are not always mutually compatible, in the sense that if you decide on a violent, gritty game, it’s not likely to be a laugh-a-minute at the same time.[1] So you need to do some hard thinking.

Every role-playing game tends in certain directions and not others. It’s a question of mechanics, in essence. If you have a lot of detailed and carefully-balanced combat rules, you have a game that encourages fight scenes. If you have all these mechanics for fighting and the game rules state that you shouldn’t have combats, you have a game that isn’t entirely comfortable with itself; you might say that the game is a bit incoherent. The basic question of coherence is this: the game needs mechanics that encourage and reward the desired sort of play.

In these alternate rules, we’re proposing some ways of doing a Shadows in the Fog campaign that the basic rules do not encourage or support. So what we’re giving you here is some new rules, and some explanations of what sorts of effects they will have on your game. If you like the effect, try the rules that make it happen. If you don’t, don’t. It’s as simple as that.

What we really don’t recommend is trying a lot of these alternate rules at once. If you think you might like to try several, bounce your conception off your players first. Make sure everyone sees what you’re trying to get at, and why, and that they all like the total picture this makes. Remember: it’s going to take everyone’s participation to make the game work, and the more complex and baroque you make the system, the harder it’s going to be for everyone to do his or her job.

In each of these alternate rules sets, we give you four basic points. First, there is a concept, which will to some degree drive the campaign. Second, there’s a set of mechanics, which will foreground this concept. Third, there’s a description of the specific effects, and why the mechanics are likely to provoke them. And fourth, there’s a discussion of the down-side, the things to watch out for.

We like Shadows in the Fog the way it is, but we also like these alternate rules. We’ve tried it several ways, and we’ve tinkered with it as we went along. But when it comes to your game, we have no strong opinions. If you want to try something unusual, go for it—and if you try something brand new that turns out really cool, please let us know! We’ll factor it into a new edition, or a supplement, or something like that.

One final point about alternate rules. Some of these may work pretty well by themselves, applied to a single character and player, while others will really redirect the whole campaign. If you have a player who thinks the whole Assumption idea is just too cool for words, you might consider allowing those rules to apply to that player. Bear in mind, though, that you’re going to restructure the game in doing this. The old question of “balance,” i.e. of making sure that every character is as tough as every other, is going straight out the window. If that’s okay with you and your group, fine; if not, don’t let just one player Assume.

Rules Sets Thus Far...

• TheAssumption
• DarkShadows

Really Different Rules

Here are some spin-offs of Shadows in the Fog that produce something very different from the original game. If you've got one of these, please email me and we'll set up a home for it here.

• Lee Short, LegoOfTheGods

Notes

[1] Actually, it could be, if your game is deliberately a bit deviant. Take a look at kill puppies for satan, by Vincent Baker (known as lumpley). It’s violent, gritty, disgusting, and hilarious. It’s also the exception that proves the rule.

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 24 Dec 2004

This page is linked to by: DarkShadows, LegoOfTheGods, SitfRunningWhyThisWay, TableOfContents, TheAssumption,