Positively Desiccated

When The Wire, Oz, and The Soprano's first aired, I used to have to avoid people at work on Mondays. I couldn't afford HBO, so got tapes from my grandmother every Monday morning of that weekend's episodes. The same tapes she would record over the next weekend for me after I brought them back by Friday.

Anyone who went through a similar ritual will recall how those tapes degrade over time. Things would get grainy and dark with the occasional ghost images. Sometimes seconds would skip or audio would drag into weird contortions. The physical medium's limitations came close to adding a supernatural element to grounded, crime-driven dramas.

It is through that lens I see my Sunday night Torchbearer in Lankhmar game. Like the shows, we are exploring the nature of criminals in the context of the world they live. The game system itself provides the warp of the tape through the way Tests and Twists work.

For the uninitiated, in Torchbearer you only roll dice when there is something to roll for. In a simple example, you don't roll to search for traps unless there are traps to be found. You don't roll to manipulate someone unless they are going to resist your manipulations.

In practical terms, this means that when a test is called for, something is about to happen. In Wire terms, it is the tension point before you know Bodie and Pooh are going to gun down Wallace as he begs for his life.