We've already discussed Storium's first (and my favorite) Neutral card type, the Subplot, but that's not the only Neutral card type in Storium. Today, I'm going to discuss the other two types: Assets and Goals.
Unlike all the other cards in Storium, Assets and Goals are not things that you start with - they aren't part of your character from the beginning, and they aren't chosen at Refreshes or upon spending a stack or anything like that. Whether you have these cards or not isn't up to you, entirely - it depends on the narrator. These are both given to players - or provided for pickup - by the narrator at his will.
Assets represent things like items, people, or other resources that are sufficiently important to the story to be specifically noted. Narrators vary in how they use them—some toss out a ton, some toss out generic ones that players can customize (more on that later), and some provide only very specific, story-critical assets. The use is the same, regardless: You play the card and move things forward, telling how that resource is important in pushing the challenge closer to conclusion. It can sometimes be easier to write asset moves if you play a Strength or Weakness with them, so you can write how you use that asset well or badly.
Goals are kind of like Subplots, but they're things the narrator would like to see you address during the game. Like assets, narrators use these for all sorts of purposes. I've seen them used to represent injuries, enchantments, objectives…I've seen them used as requests to world-build or create NPCs that the narrator can use…all sorts of things. They work similarly to subplots - you get a stack, and when you play all the cards of that stack, you get a free Wild Strength as a reward. Basically, these are the narrator's way of saying, "Hey, talk about this in the story or show this happening, and if you do it, you can get a Strength card for making the story more interesting."
Narrators may give Assets or Goals to you directly, or may lay them out to be picked up. You can pick up a card that a narrator set out by using the "pick up cards" button at the bottom of your move editing window when writing a move. If picking a card up, you'll often want to actually show the item being picked up as part of your move, or show your character now thinking about the Goal and deciding to take it up, but that isn't always necessary (for instance, I often use Assets to represent other characters traveling with the group).
Whether given to you or picked up by you, you can then hold on to the asset card until you feel like playing it. You can also pick up and play an asset card in the same move.
Like subplots, assets and goals are neutral cards–they push a challenge closer to conclusion but don't themselves tip the scale one way or another. I look at it like this: You might have a gun, and that might matter to a scene, but whether it is a good thing or a bad thing really depends on how you use it…so Strengths and Weaknesses are still what you use to affect outcomes. That's not to say you have to play one of those cards along with an asset or goal, but I do have to say I generally find it easier to write moves for asset or goal cards if I play them with a Strength or Weakness myself.
If you play an asset or goal card on its own, think like you do for Subplot cards: the card is important to the scene and pushes things towards a conclusion, but doesn't change the current Strong/Weak balance so things still feel like they're headed for the ending they were headed for before, overall. As with Subplots, that can feel good if things were headed towards a Strong outcome, or bad if they were headed for a Weak outcome, or just...well...uncertain if they were headed for an Uncertain outcome. The overall feel of the situation hasn't changed, but now there's less time to change it.
Asset cards can be rewritten, as I've noted above. If an asset card has multiple uses (a "stack"), you can use the "browse your cards" button in your move writing window to look at it and rewrite the asset. This consumes one use of the asset card stack, but lets you rename it to something that seems more narratively important at the time. That means that if you have, say, a stack of asset cards representing a gun and you don't have access to that gun in the story presently, you can just rewrite the stack into something else–maybe your character always keeps a city map around.
Note that not all narrators allow that – some really prefer assets to represent one thing and one thing only. But the basic idea of how they're set up is to give you something to use when you feel like your character would have something to help out and you want to highlight that. I believe Stephen Hood called them "ways to plug holes in the plot," and that's a pretty apt description.
Assets and Goals will feature majorly in some games, and barely at all in others, depending on the narrator's style, but they're cards you need to be aware of. I actually haven't written all that much on Assets and Goals over the course of my writing on this blog, as in my own narration they are cards I don't use much! This is a case where I suggest talking with other players and narrators on Storium more than looking to my writing for advice. That said, here are a few articles that cover Neutral cards more generally:
9/23/2020
9/22/2020
Bonus Track - Concert Ticket Stubs
Hi there! I hope very much that you all are staying home when you can and staying safe. For the first time in a loooong time, I have a Bonus Track for you. In this episode I go through my concert ticket stubs that I saved (most of them from before my twenties), and talk about each show, if I remember anything about it. There's some fun stories in there that I hope you will like. Thanks to Sean and Lisa for the inspiration, there's an Autobiography of a Schnook episode where the two of them talk about the concerts they went to in 2019. As always, please take care of yourselves and thank you for listening.
Autobiography of a Schnook Podcast
Autobiography of a Schnook Podcast
9/13/2020
Character Developments
Roll Player had intrigued me for some time, but it's done by a small publisher who primarily uses Kickstarter so availability has been spotty since it came out in 2016. I finally got a chance to play it at a convention earlier this year, and was instantly hooked, so much so that I bought a copy right then and there.
The game features a game board for each player denoting one of the standard fantasy races such as elf, dwarf, or halfling, plus a few more esoteric choices like minotaur or cat person. From there players are dealt a random set of character class cards from which they choose their profession, a backstory, and an alignment.
Game play revolves around randomly choosing 6-sided dice from a bag, rolling them, and then taking turns choosing which ones to add to the different statistics on your character sheet. The number rolled on the dice is important, but so is the color -- your profession tells you what range of numbers you want, and your back story (as well as other factors) tell you what color and where on the sheet you want to place them.
After dice are chosen, players choose from a row of equipment cards which further enhance their characters, with specific equipment and skills being more or less suited to specific types of characters. Among the choices are skill cards that adjust your character's alignment (their moral compass) when used, as well as trait cards that give a point bonus at the end of the game.
These two phases are repeated 12 times, at which time all the players will have a full player board. Points are awarded based on how well optimized the character is, with bonus points for placing the the right colors of dice in the right places on your sheet, acquiring equipment and traits best suited to your character, and getting your alignment marker placed in a way that suits your alignment card.
It's a well-designed engine-building game, and I find it a bit more compelling than empire-building games like Race for the Galaxy because I'm building and individual character and equipping him (or her) for adventure, rather than a more abstract empire of planets and starships. An expansion adds the ability to fight minor monsters, building up experience in order to face off against a big bad at the end of the game, but honestly I find that addition a little distracting; I would rather just spend time building my character.
Rating: 5 (out of 5) a terrific game that's compelling but reasonably simple to play and not overly competitive, making it a great choice for a casual game night.
- Roll Player official website
- Roll Player on BoardGameGeek
Storium Basics: Card Spending And Refresh
Welcome back - today, as we continue discussing the basics of Storium, I'm going to spend a little time on the concept of Refresh.
First, though, a bit about card spending: As you play Strength and Weakness cards, you'll notice they become unavailable for selection on future plays. Even once you reach the end of a scene, you'll find you won't have the cards that you already spent available to play again.
This is how Storium manages helping you tell the ups and downs of a character's tale. As you spend Strengths and Weaknesses, they become unavailable for use. You don't get any of them back until you've spent all of them. That is, you have to spend all your Strengths and all your Weaknesses before you get any of them back.
This is another reason I've said it is best to not play Storium tactically—the system is geared towards storytelling, and in storytelling, characters have ups and downs. This is actually really cool for developing a character arc, but that's somewhat beyond the basics - for more on that, see the links below.
So, say that you've spent all your Strengths and all your Weaknesses...now, it's time to Refresh.
At the beginning of the next scene, you'll get to Refresh your cards. When you click the button to do so (which replaces your button for writing a move), you are presented with a list of all the Strengths and all the Weaknesses that you've played in the game so far. You select some of each, and those become your new hand of Strength and Weakness cards. Simple as that!
Note that the number of cards you get to refresh is determined by settings for the individual games
But though it's a simple concept, don't just rush through.
This is your opportunity to define what is important in your character's story now. That may not match up with what was important in the beginning. Refreshes are a great way to show how your character has changed, or to show what elements of your character are stable. Pick the cards you want to focus on for the next chunk of the story.
Take some time to really think it over - what is important now? What do you want to say about your character now? Who is your character now? That's what a Refresh is about - not who you've been, but who you are now. Who you are going to be as the story moves forward from this point.
So...sure, who you are now might be just who you were in the past - you might just pick your starting Strength and Weakness, maybe something closely related to them too, and call it a day. But maybe things you've revealed about yourself since then have become more important. Maybe your Toughness was central to your character at the beginning, but since then, you've become focused on Leadership and Empathy, like I mentioned last time.
This is the point where you get to show that...so take some time to think it through.
And remember: As with character creation, pick cards you want to play...not just cards you're willing to play. Just like at the start of the game, you want to pick things that excite you about using them. These cards are the things you will have in your hand, so they're the things you will have to play before you can Refresh again. So make them things that you want to play, not just things that you grudgingly put in your hand again.
For more on Refresh, see the below posts - but please be aware that since I wrote some of these, the Refresh rules did change somewhat. The philosophy still applies, but some of the mechanics will sometimes be a bit different. In particular, I believe you can now pretty easily choose to get rid of your starting Strength / Weakness in a Refresh because - if I'm recalling correctly - you can now choose any card multiple times in a Refresh. In the old days, that wasn't the case, so you'll see references here for how it will take multiple Refreshes to get a starting card out of your hand.
Similarly, these were written before custom card settings were a thing.
Still, I believe the philosophies discussed here can be helpful:
First, though, a bit about card spending: As you play Strength and Weakness cards, you'll notice they become unavailable for selection on future plays. Even once you reach the end of a scene, you'll find you won't have the cards that you already spent available to play again.
This is how Storium manages helping you tell the ups and downs of a character's tale. As you spend Strengths and Weaknesses, they become unavailable for use. You don't get any of them back until you've spent all of them. That is, you have to spend all your Strengths and all your Weaknesses before you get any of them back.
This is another reason I've said it is best to not play Storium tactically—the system is geared towards storytelling, and in storytelling, characters have ups and downs. This is actually really cool for developing a character arc, but that's somewhat beyond the basics - for more on that, see the links below.
So, say that you've spent all your Strengths and all your Weaknesses...now, it's time to Refresh.
At the beginning of the next scene, you'll get to Refresh your cards. When you click the button to do so (which replaces your button for writing a move), you are presented with a list of all the Strengths and all the Weaknesses that you've played in the game so far. You select some of each, and those become your new hand of Strength and Weakness cards. Simple as that!
Note that the number of cards you get to refresh is determined by settings for the individual games
But though it's a simple concept, don't just rush through.
This is your opportunity to define what is important in your character's story now. That may not match up with what was important in the beginning. Refreshes are a great way to show how your character has changed, or to show what elements of your character are stable. Pick the cards you want to focus on for the next chunk of the story.
Take some time to really think it over - what is important now? What do you want to say about your character now? Who is your character now? That's what a Refresh is about - not who you've been, but who you are now. Who you are going to be as the story moves forward from this point.
So...sure, who you are now might be just who you were in the past - you might just pick your starting Strength and Weakness, maybe something closely related to them too, and call it a day. But maybe things you've revealed about yourself since then have become more important. Maybe your Toughness was central to your character at the beginning, but since then, you've become focused on Leadership and Empathy, like I mentioned last time.
This is the point where you get to show that...so take some time to think it through.
And remember: As with character creation, pick cards you want to play...not just cards you're willing to play. Just like at the start of the game, you want to pick things that excite you about using them. These cards are the things you will have in your hand, so they're the things you will have to play before you can Refresh again. So make them things that you want to play, not just things that you grudgingly put in your hand again.
For more on Refresh, see the below posts - but please be aware that since I wrote some of these, the Refresh rules did change somewhat. The philosophy still applies, but some of the mechanics will sometimes be a bit different. In particular, I believe you can now pretty easily choose to get rid of your starting Strength / Weakness in a Refresh because - if I'm recalling correctly - you can now choose any card multiple times in a Refresh. In the old days, that wasn't the case, so you'll see references here for how it will take multiple Refreshes to get a starting card out of your hand.
Similarly, these were written before custom card settings were a thing.
Still, I believe the philosophies discussed here can be helpful:
- Great Ideas: Easy Resource Management (Storium)
- Okay, that one is just about why I love the way Storium handles card spending and Refresh.
- Establishing Character Arcs
- Character Arc vs. Game Arc
- No Card Play is "Wasted"
- Character Development Through Wild Cards
- Refreshing Cards - "What's Important Now?"
- Situational Strengths and Weaknesses
- Building Character
- Choose Cards You Want to Play
- Build Towards Something
9/04/2020
SCARAB - Video Review
We're revisiting one of the earlier games I reviewed for The Collection Chamber - S.C.A.R.A.B. (1997 Electronic Arts). My opinion on this 3D arena shooter with a heavy emphasis on strategy seems to changes every time I boot it up. Watch the video to find out my current thoughts, then see my 5-years out of date sentiments in the original review linked below.
I've updated the installer too, so it's the perfect time to play it again and see if your own views on it have changed too. Click the link after the jump to find out more.
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