There are times when I play a game I have a hard time identifying why I enjoyed it. Was it the people at the table? Was it some mechanical quality that peaked my interest? Was it that wonderful combination of both?
With some games this reflection is easy. I enjoyed one aspect of The Mountain Witch, the duel. The ritualized way in which we played it, with rolling a die in secret, then revealing it, creating a tension at the table not unlike a samurai movie. The reveal becomes the pass, where you find out whom took the fatal cut.
It is basically Rochambeau, but such a perfect version of that game, that you forget what you are doing in service of the narrative. I couldn't tell you anything else about the rest of the mechanics of the game though. Nothing else stuck.
The Riddle of Steel is a lot like that, but had a larger impact on how I think about game design. It is also deeply coupled with a friendship I developed and a hobby I have since put down, which gives it a certain kind of stickiness. It has a legacy in my design work that inevitably shows up.
The game itself, is in many ways, a self-serious fantasy heartbreaker. Possibly the best fantasy heartbreaker around, but still Jake Norwood, the author, wrote it as an answer to his discontent with other RPGs. It was part of a movement that flourished in the late 90s and early 00s that centered on a rejection of D&D.
Everything about it screams, "I am dissatisfied with the status quo!"
Like many games of that time, it opened with character creation, which is a glorious mishmash of distorted reflections. You can see aspects of D&D, Traveller, Pendragon, and Vampire the Masquerade. Dice pools, social standings, a litany of skills, spiritual attributes, and a set of fighting maneuvers all compete for space with a hit location chart. At first glance, it looks woefully dull, hiding the clever play that grows out of it.
I have to back up a little bit. Context is important.
At the same time that you had this flourishing of independent game design there was a flourishing interest in learning the semi-lost forms of western martial arts. You had groups popping up all over, some focused on the fun, and others centered on more scholarly pursuits, attempting to rediscover these methods of fighting.
One such group was the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA). Another was the Historical European Martial Arts Alliance (HEMA or HEMAA). I think they had some sort of 60's style dojo disagreement at some point. If you get a chance, look up Count Dante. You will not be disappointed.
Honestly, how no one has made a movie or game about the Chicago Dojo Wars by now is beyond me. It would be perfect for Scorsese.
Any road, there was this surge of folks interested in this rediscovery, and Jake was one of them. His experiences were so impactful that they shaped the mechanics of combat very deeply and he got ARMA's endorsement. It is why you get statements like this in the text...
Though still a game, it is closer to representing real fighting than any RPG combat system ever written.
It is an astonishing conceit, but not uncommon for the time. There can be no doubt that the system is very much designed to emulate actual physical combat, opposed to the metaphorical D20 roll of D&D. It still suffers from that heritage at points, but the very order of a "round" speaks a different language than other games at that time.
- Declare stance.
- Establish aggressor and defender (initiative). Combat Pool fills or refreshes, with all Modifiers.
- First half of the “Exchange of Blows;” aggressor attacks and defender defends.
- Resolve damage and/or determine new attitude (aggressor or defender).
- Second half of the “Exchange of Blows;” aggressor attacks and defender defends. These roles may have reversed since the first Exchange.
- Resolve damage and/or determine new attitude (aggressor or defender).
When I first played the game, it took some getting used to. I hadn't quite shed the constraints that came with years of playing D&D-like games . At the time, I was just beginning to get experimental in my art, and I hadn't yet picked up a sword to truly understand what Jake was trying to create.
And to be clear, this system was brutal. Fights were fast and deadly. If you didn't have reach, you were in trouble. Every weapon, even the lowliest of weapons in other games, the dagger, was an object of mortal terror. But that is where the spiritual attributes made this game something special.
It is supremely annoying that the rules for these things are buried in the text. If you read the book, they read kinda like a variation on Stafford's Passions in Pendragon. Instead, they are the thing that made The Riddle of Steel something worth remembering and influential on me.
Spiritual attributes were the great equalizer in play. It may seem normal now, but back then, the idea that a character's Faith or Conscience being brought into the narrative as a mechanical element was rare if not unheard of. If you played to your character's attributes, it gave you a distinct advantage in the challenging combat system.
When I got the game not long after it came out, it started to help me connect certain dots, but it didn't all click until I met the author years later. We struck up a friendship, and he introduced me to western martial arts, which is still his passion. When I began practicing myself with a local organization, The Chicago Swordplay Guild, more things clicked in my head.
Of those things, the most relevant to my own game design, was to get better at drawing lines between the metaphorical and simulated conflict resolution. When you get hit in the face as many times as I did with a 17th century Italian rapier, you start to realize, among other things, that trying to recreate that feeling without having lived it is a fools errand.
As I look at the text now, the creaking bits and fault lines show. I got to play test a few different versions of new games Jake had been working on over the years. Each time I got to play with him or read what he was working on I was blown away with his evolution from this ur-text. Even those glances and brief interludes of play carry a weight with my design sensibilities.
Unfortunately, none of them have seen the light of day to be shared with others. Time and life seems to always be getting in the way. Maybe one day we will get lucky and some incarnation of his work will land in our laps. Maybe not...
In the End, there is only Steel.
