Getting the full impact of the story of a game

I just finished reading Permanence, by Karl Schroeder, today. For those of you who don't know, it's a outer space science fiction story with some intriguing aliens and some cool plot twists and turns, and real sense of wonder.

More than once I've lamented the fact that never have science fiction games turned out like I'd want them. When I finished Permanence I once again got reminded of that, since some parts of that book would work just fine as scenes in a Transhuman Space game. But, the philosophical implications, the inner turmoil of the characters and the way the mysteries of the settings were shadowed in the actions of the protagonists of the novel, those would probably never crop up in a game. Maybe it's a problem for me that the kind of sf I like is hard to recreate in a game. Or is it something else?

A while back I watched the Western remake, True Grit. It was a fabulous movie, with great shots and excellent interplay between the characters as they discovered their own "true grit". They way it was shot, using the scenes and the camera to show distance and closeness was also excellent. Today I saw the original, the True Grit from 1969 with John Wayne. I'm quite fond of many of his western movies. The Searchers, High Noon and Stagecoach I consider some of my favourites of all time. So, here we had the same story told in two different ways, just like the same adventure could play out very differently at two different tables.

That movie was shot very differently. It was always very light, never dark even when it was clearly supposed to be night. The music was so light and merry I almost laughed. After hearing for so long that "this ain't an easy trip, sister", that music totally flipped that impression over into a jolly ride into the wilderness. Surprisingly many of the lines the actors had were identical in the two movies, but they felt quite different. They both basically said the same thing, but it came across in a new way.

So, what does that mean for my longing after the deep impact of Permanence in my science fiction games? Well. I know that I can decide not to play jolly music when it's supposed to be grim, and I can try to describe the inner conflicts in NPCs by their external actions. But, I'm still a far away from capturing that magic. Sometimes you say the same things, and it comes across in a totally different way.

I wonder if I'll solve that riddle.

But, damn do I want to play an Old West game now, or what!

Playing Boot Hill again

The day before yesterday I once again played Boot Hill. It was a very old school experience. We had started an adventure, five years ago, and none of us remembered a thing. Our referee looked mystified at his notes while we players tried to decipher our scribblings on the character sheets. What were those abilities again? Finally we figured out what numbers meant we were good at shooting, and our referee rolled back time and we restarted the adventure.

You know how we all say over and over again that deadly systems often have very quick character generation systems? This is a game that should need a very, very quick character generation system! We sat in a cantina somewhere and in came some ruffians, and naturally a fight erupted. My character was a greenhorn and botched loading his musket, and was a sitting duck while the lead was heavy in the air. Finally I managed to get a shot off with my "appropriated" french revolver we had found on some guy during a big kerfuffle in Mexico City. Then a bullet struck my character in the head.

Luckily I survived, but did nothing more in the fight than turning over the table each time someone entered the room, to have some cover during the fight.

The system is really peculiar. You get increases in abilities, but you get bonuses at spaced out intervals. That is interesting, since you can get both the satisfaction of seeing the numbers increase, and the "stair" effect of a level based system. Also, you have stats for sight and hearing, gun accuracy and throwing accuracy. It's really a system where the stats play first fiddle, and the skills are something of an oddity tacked on.

From the reviews I've read, nobody seems to think very highly of the game and I agree that it lacks that something extra. Still, we had fun in a crazy way. My character has 100% speed, 06% in intelligence, 98% in sight and slightly bad of hearing. Naturally I just had to do whatever was the most stupid thing possible, while still trying to stay alive and instant hilarity is guaranteed. Extremes are always more fun when trying to roleplay.

Our GM have created a big pile of tables for weapons, extra rules, tabled and such from decades of playing the game. I'm trying to convince him to type it up for the world to see. Contrary to the deadliness correlation mentioned above, his variant is actually not that quick. But, thanks to all those tables you get to know what you did in the war, where your family is from and all that stuff. I love life path systems!

Maybe our next session will be sooner than another five years...