Moebius Adventures

So I joined RPGBloggers Network a month or two ago. Someone decided it would be a good and fun thing to have bloggers give small press games (and when you consider the size of the 'big' press in this industry, small press is Very Small Indeed!) a little coverage, not in a shilling/advertising way, but as a means of calling attention to Cool Stuff that might otherwise be easily missed. I scanned down the list of smaller companies interested in participating, and saw Moebius Adventures, a universal RPG.

 

I love universal RPGs. They're one of my main passions, and one reason I tend to greatly dislike Forge-style games, which are by design anti-universal -- they're often extremely narrow in scope and are only capable of resolving conflicts which the designer decided ahead of time should be resolved. (Or they have some incredibly vague and generic mechanic which is barely a step above "Roll two dice, if the red one is higher than the blue one, you win!") I freely admit to preferring more "simulationist" systems, because I am an insane worldbuilder, and I want a system to handle any idea I have, to turn any concept I can come up with into game mechanics I can rely on. If I attack a hamster with an Uzi, I do not want the game to tell me this is a "Conflict Of Violence" and apply the exact same resolution mechanic ("Compare your Heart to the Tragedy Rating of the current Interlude. You may spend Hope.") as if I'd attacked a tyrannosaurus with a flint knife. Sure, you can go way too far the other way (Spycraft teeters right on the edge of 'too complex'; something like Phoenix Command plunges way into the abyss), but I find it's easier to strip rules than to add them, and the perfect game, for me, is one where I can find a rule for anything I might reasonably need to resolve, and the rule reflects, to at least some extent, the perceived reality of the conflict -- a wall covered in grease is harder to climb than one which is not, a large animal takes more damage than a smaller one, a strong-willed dwarf is harder to persuade than a cowardly kobold, etcetera.

 

We're digressing, of course, but if you've read anything in this blog before, you'll know I'm the Tristram Shandy of bloggers, which is amusing since I utterly despised that piece of incoherent dreck when they made us read it in college.

 

Enough about why I like universal games, then. Let's look at Moebius Adventures. I will try not make this review/chargen too one sided.

 

Get it? Moebius? One sided? Thank you, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waiter.

 

More after the break!

Anyway, Moebius Adventures is a universal RPG by Fitz. I asked for a copy for review for this blog; he sent it to me, despite having read the blog. (Which puts me in mind of wondering why people ever agree to be interviewed by Penn Jillette or Michael Moore.) So, in keeping with the revised FTC guidelines for bloggers, I hereby state clearly and prominently I got a free copy of the PDF.

 

Now that that's over with...

 

Before seeing the game, I decided a good test of the system would be to roll up (despite the fact no one rolls dice for character creation any more, the term persists) Bouncing Boy, as he's a fairly unique hero and a good test of a universal system, one which doesn't strain power levels but which could strain flexibility. After seeing the game...

 

Well, here's the thing. While the cover of Moebius Adventures features cowboys, liches, spacemen, WW2 soldiers, and so on, the actual rules only cover non-magical medieval stuff. A page lists forthcoming rules dealing with cybernetic spies and traditional magical fantasy; as best as I can tell from the publisher's page on RPGNow, these have not been released despite being listed as coming in 2008. Now, I certainly do not fault a single-man operation for lagging on release schedules, I just thought it ought to be noted.

 

So, pretty much, the only character concepts I can create are, well, humans from a roughly middle-ages type setting with no magic and very few monsters. Shrug. Well, I've come this far, I might as well keep going.

 

Remember what I said about not rolling up characters anymore? Well, it seems I was wrong. Moebius uses a mix of random and directed character creation. (There's alternate rules for point based, but for these entries, I try to always use the 'suggested' or 'default' methods.)

 

We begin in the womb -- literally, according to the rules. I first roll a D10 for my Family. Five. I am born of Peasant stock.

 

There are four characteristic groups: Mind, Body, Soul, and Random. I roll 3d6, rerolling any "1"s, and this gives me the base points to divide among Mind, Body, and Soul. I end up with nine. I cannot have more than 10 in one category -- not a problem here! Hmm. Let's try for a big honkin' mercenary type. I will put 5 into Body, 2 into Mind, and 2 into Soul.

 

Now I multiply each group's points by 4.

 

Body 20

Mind 8

Soul 8

 

Now, I divide those points into the characteristics in each group.

 

You might notice something missing at this point -- any idea of what the numbers mean. It can be presumed 10 is Very Good and 1 is Totally Lame, but the exact scale and meaning is not yet given. Is an Intelligence (one of the Mind stats) of 1 a brain-dead vegetable, or simply a bit slow witted? Is a 10 beyond human comprehension, or just reasonably bright? Is 5 an assumed 'average'? These aren't redundant or nitpicky questions -- some games use a 1-10 scale to encompass everything from crawling vermin at 1 to demigods at 10, and sometimes "average human" is 2, or 7.

 

Anyway, I've got 12 characteristics and not a lot of points.

Mind

Intelligence: 1

Charisma: 2

Perception: 4

Common Sense: 1

 

Body

Strength: 7

Agility: 4

Speed: 4

Stamina: 5

 

Soul

Wisdom: 1

Faith: 1

Conviction: 2

Life: 4