[Design] Draft review of 'Trollbabe'

[Lev Lafayette]

Trollbabe, Ron Edwards, Adept Press, 2002, 48pp, $10
USD pdf.

Presentation: C
Style: B
Value: C
Game: B-
Narrative: A+
Simulation: F

Trollbabe is in the author's words "my bid for Vanilla
Narrtivism". Using Professor Edwards own model,
Narrativism is the contemporary flavour as far as game
design is concerned. If one likes, from the
mid-seventies to early eighties RPG design belonged to
gamism, from the early eighties to mid nineties
simulationist games were de riguer and since then
narrativist games have held the cutting edge.

The setting of Trollbabe is a Germanic-Celtic iron age
environment where the players take the role of
"Trollbabes", women who are half-troll, half-human who
exist in a borderland between the two conflicting
societies. Their adventures have "Stakes" and
"Consequences" which occur at a Scale to be determined
by the GM (a few people, a village, a town etc).
Annoyingly, guidelines of Scale are minimal at best.

Characters in Trollbabe have one stat; the number,
which is somewhere between 2 and 9. To succeed at
Magical actions one must roll over the number. To
succeed at Fighting one rolls under the number and to
engage in Social actions one rolls whatever's the best
including the number. So, if the number is 7, the
Trollbabe succeeds at Magic on a d10 roll between 8
and 10, Fighting at 1-6 ans Social interactions at
1-7. In essence, it's a clever way of saying all
characters have 18 points to distribute between three
stats.

Each value has speciality which provides colour and
special effects. A visually orientated game,
Trollbabes must also describe their hair colour and
style, the size and shape of their horns, two items
(one human, one troll) and their preferred clothes.
Characters must always begin the game travelling
somewhere on foot. Again, all Trolls are equal but
different.

The three values are extremely limiting and require
some rather interesting interpretations for character
action. Consider, for example, a character producing a
piece of craftwork. The Social value is out as it has
already been specified that the character is the one
producing it. Magic is a possibility, but that would
suggest that *all* craftworkers, smithies, coopers,
fletchers etc are magicians. Fighting? Well, I guess
it's a sort of combat.

Similar simplicity could have been achieved, for
example, with four values (Physical actions, Mental
actions, Social actions and Magical actions) with an
extensive, indeed arguably complete, range of
adaptability. It is a strange claim to Narrativism
when the game system unduly itself limits the
narrative options.

Game play begins with the GM setting a scene which may
incvolve a conflict. Not all scenes include conflicts,
but all conflicts are resolved in scenes. Players may
request scenes from the GM (e.g., "I want to have a
scene at the Temple" "OK, you're there"). The use of
scenes as the dominant locus of action is very
different to the gamist approach of a location on a
map with each location having equal value.

Conflicts are determined according to Pace;
action-by-action, exchange-by-exchange or entire
conflicts. This is a nice narrative feature allowing
for criticial scenes to be played out with detail and
with incidental scenes resolved quickly. The
protagonist, player or GM, determines the Pace by
initiating the Conflict. A lost narrative system
opportunity here would have been to resolve pace
according to how close it is to the theme and Stakes
of the adventure. A "Fair and Clear" stage is used to
ensure that the GM (and players) can't introduce new
elements in the mniddle of a conflict.

Conflict are resolve by series. Failure leads to a
character to be discommoded, injured, incapacitated,
or with the player describing their death - ultimately
only the player can determine a character's death.
Each failure allows a player to reroll by 'ticking
off' a bonus plot device for their character, such as
a caried object, a sudden ally, or a handy
geographical location. It is recommended that the GM
use character injury to further entangle the character
in the Stakes.

Conflicts can use combinations (e.g., Social and Fight
to inspired troops). In these cases two or more dice
are rolled simultaneously. This causes a greater
chance of success but also with more serious
consequences upon failure. Modifiers appear only be
expressed in the negative. Scale changes affect
success rolls by -1 or -2 (greater for magic) which
naturally enough would have simulationists justly
howling in disbelief.

The general sequence of events is (a) establish the
scence (b) determine conflict and action type, (c)
determine pace, (d) fair and clear (e) resolution. In
all conflicts only Trollbabes roll for action
resolution - this is their story and they alone are a
responsible for the fates. 

Relationships arise out of conflicts which can be used
in future events. They are difficult to establish but
easy to lose. After adventures, Scale and Stakes can
be raised, an interesting narrative tool which allows
the scale of a story to continiously increase; one can
never go backwards, even after several defeats - the
attention of greater powers is never lost. Further,
the Number can be modified by + or - 1.

Trollbabe is a game of excellent narrativist concepts
and moments of brilliance, but seriously lacking
elaboration and substance. It is surprisingly gamist
in many instances, although this is not explicitly
stated. The artwork is acceptable and the writing
reasonably clear, although some some presentation
methods (e.g., indexing) would help even in this short
text. It is fairly expensive for what you get. As a
game system, it works but only just. The world still
awaits an A-grade narrativist system.

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