I was going to write about my impressions of Origins '98, but the vast
majority of my weekend in Columbus was magically swallowed by Iron
Crown Enterprises' "Run out the guns!" tournament. So I thought I'd
write about that, instead.

Very rarely am I extremely enthusiastic about a new roleplaying product,
particularly not one that's effectively a supplement or other add-on to
an existing game system. Though I do buy a fair number of RPGs based on
the strength of a con event that I sampled, I've rarely found a con
event to really do a good job of conveying the potential of the game.

"Run out the guns!" is that rare game that seems almost ideally suited
to convention play in the "Living Campaign" style (continuous world
history, characters carried from round to round, etc.) and shows
tremendous promise for one-shot or long-term campaign play at home, as
well.

This is not a game which pushes the boundaries of roleplaying,
re-invents the art form, or pretends to be making some grand
statement. This is squarely in the "roleplay is supposed to be FUN"
category, and it does a good job with just that. No fancy mechanics.
Percentile dice, not card interpretations or hands of poker or other
such strangeness. No glossy artwork. No angstful creatures of the
night. It's good old-fashioned roleplaying, and it's unabashedly fun.

The theme, quite simply, is pirates -- 17th century, historical, New
World. It's a nice blend of historical faithfulness, playability, and
swashbuckling. The engine is stripped-down Rolemaster. While the
mechanics will look familiar to those acquainted with Rolemaster, it
feels no more chart-heavy than the average RPG. It plays quickly and
cleanly.

ICE calls the product an "adventure kit"... fast character generation
(you pick an archetype and background packages); solid, detailed, but
not overwhelming background information; superb conveying of the
spirit of the genre; and an emphasis on party cooperation to get tasks
done collectively. The product claims to be self-contained, and this
is a reasonably accurate description -- everything you need is in the
box, though Rolemaster junkies can elect to use the full Rolemaster
system with it. (A basic knowledge of Rolemaster certainly does not
hurt the GM for adjudicating unusual situations, but it's definitely
not necessary.)

ICE apparently ran, at Origins '97, a version of this tournament;
Origins '98 involved large numbers of players (indeed, dozens
simultaneously in the final round), many of whom spent a goodly
portion of their con just doing this game. I came into the game on
Friday night, and ended up cancelling my Saturday and Sunday events to
play the remaining sessions, and from a look around me, this wasn't an
unusual thing to be doing -- I'm sure the extremely tight "almost all
RPG tickets sold out" situation at Origins '98 helped this out,
too. The idea is, you form a ship and a crew, you go off and do a
bunch of privateering, and everyone meets up for the finale for one
grand mighty battle.

It was tremendous amounts of fun; one of the game's authors, Jason
Hawkins, is an outstanding gamemaster -- one of the best I've ever had
the privilege of playing with. (I have also never encountered anyone
who could sustain a voice and energy level of that level over four
days of a con, without going completely hoarse and/or becoming
psychotically caffeinated.) Indeed, the GM'ing crew for the tournament
looked to be excellent all 'round... ICE ought to be congratulated, I
have no idea how they managed that.

I love high-energy games that involve players jumping on their chairs
and screaming things; this is definitely a setting that encourages it.
I've heard enough "ARRRRR!"s and "FIRE!" and "CHARGE!" roars this
weekend to leave a ringing in my ears, but this is a game which seems
to demand -- and get -- extroverted play. (The quality of the GM, and
the willingness of the players to cut loose, is certainly a factor
here, though.)  The setting has a nice blend of potential for "pure"
roleplaying, adventure, and action -- this is definitely not simply
a game of shoot-the-enemy-and-take-his-gold.

More objectively, with the "convention high" wearing off me, taking
a closer look at what I got for my $30, buying the boxed set:

First, much to my irritation, the box was completely crushed by my
trip home, though neatly packed in my luggage. It was packed together
with several other comparably-sized-and-packaged boxed sets, all of
which survived just fine; this box flattened. Now I'll have to find a
case for the materials.

The production values are relatively minimal -- the game comes on a
bunch of thin, black-and-white booklets; the best that can be said
about them is that they're well-laid-out and suitable for xeroxing. If
I were to run a campaign of this, the first thing I'd do is to xerox
the entire thing, laminate it, and put it in a three-ring binder; the
booklets wouldn't survive otherwise.

There is a good-quality, poster-style color map of the relevant
coasts, as well as some smaller black-and-white maps. I'm not sure
what I'll do with the map -- again, laminate is probably the right
solution.

The other black-and-white art, overall, is serviceable -- neither
exceptionally good nor bad. Typefaces and layout overall are clear,
though I could have wished for better xerox-ability on the combat
charts.

There's a handy set of four ten-sided dice with the package (two sets
of different-colored percentiles). This is a thoughtful touch for a
theoretically "ready-to-play" game. Overall, though, I think I'd rather
have a single softbound book than the boxed set; I expect that typical
other people will treat this the way they treat other Rolemaster stuff,
i.e. xerox and three-ring-bind what you need, laminating or otherwise
protecting it as suits their own personal style of game book abuse.

While supposedly a group using the boxed set ought to be able to start
playing in short order, my belief is that in reality, _somebody_
amongst that group needs to really know what's going on... GM's
preparation is still very necessary. It's orders of magnitude simpler
to get started in than standard Rolemaster, but it's not going to be
Monopoly.

I'm all fired up to run a pirates campaign right now, but even with
the material provided, I feel like I need to go out and do bunches of
research. This may be my personal twitch, but while the background's
nice, it's certainly not a full-fledged campaign world in the
traditional sense... Delving into the real history will be necessary.
(That, or the willingness to depart totally from history and do the
Errol Flynn take on things.)

That being said... I wholeheartedly recommend the product as-is.  I
also highly encourage anybody who has even the remotest interest in
pirates, and who will be at GenCon this year, to round up a bunch of
friends and play in at least one session of the "Run out the guns!"
tournament there; I assume it's going to be similar to the Origins
tournament. It really is that good.

I'm already regretting that I can't take my tournament character into
an RPGA Living Campaign of this.

And I want expansion material. Badly. :)


	-- Lydia