Fan Club “Blog” #6: Vaesen Review CONTROVERSY (Patreon)

I had a bit of criticism on this month’s Vaesen review, folks, and I’m not one to shy away from a fight*. You better believe I’m dropping a “hot blog”.

Here’s what happened: In the review I made a big song and dance over the fact that Vaesen’s dice system encourages players to roll dice when using their skills, but also only offers the result of players “Succeeding” or “Failing” at roll. This means players fail a lot of rolls, which I point out in an investigation game means they often fail to gather clues, which is bad because it brings both the game and the story to a dead stop.

OR SO I THOUGHT. (Dramatic trill of music)

After publishing the review, a dozen or so tremendously forgiving Vaesen fans pointed out that this is a straight mistake on my part. “On page 40 of the Vaesen rulebook,” they said, “is a boxout titled ‘The Story Must Go On’ which reads as follows:”

“The Gamemaster must make sure that failed tests do not bring the story to a standstill. [This] could happen if you fail to obtain the information you need to locate a certain creature, or if you are locked up and required to pick a lock in order to escape. When a failed test threatens the flow of the story, there are three methods the Gamemaster can use to salvage the situation: Consequences, Conditions and requirements.”

These three methods are basically “You succeed but something unrelated goes wrong, OR you mark a Condition on your character sheet, OR you succeed but actually you don’t because actually there’s an additional obstacle between you and what you wanted.”

Picture for reference:

Oh gosh! Sure looks like I'm fucked, eh? But it gets worse!

The publishers of Vaesen themselves, Free League, also posted a comment on the video that additionally pointed out that on page 177 of the book (in the section on how to run adventures) it says that clues central to the mystery should each be placed ideally three times, and also not require a dice roll to get them.

Honestly, I’m so impressed by how civil the Free League comment was. If it was me running that social media account I’d probably have tried and to pay someone in England to go throw fruit at my window.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m excusing my mistake. I really don’t. But... well, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. 😅😅😅

(Please imagine me as a defense attorney in a courtroom, wearing an ill-fitting suit with enormous sweat patches under the armpits.)

What do we learn from this debacle, ladies and gentleman of the jury?? We learn this:

Make sure the important rules of your game aren’t something your reader can miss.

While I’m proud to run little campaigns of all the games I review on Quinns Quest, I can’t profess to reading every page of all of these giant rulebooks, because nobody does. Unless your game has world-class writing, layout, and editing so that each page has the balance and sharpness of a chef’s knife, your players are going to be skimming sections of the rulebook until they're sure they get the idea.

This is what happened to me, and this is how I missed this rule. It’s only mentioned twice, and neither time is it prominent.  Jesus, the bestiary entry on Pixies has twice the wordcount of this rule. Also, in what universe is it a good idea to put the advice of “not putting major clues behind skill checks” on page ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN of the book, buried FIVE PARAGRAPHS DEEP in a dull-looking subhead that just reads “Clues.”

You might think my shameful argument excusing my unprofessionalism ends here. Unfortunately for myself & my dwindling reserves of dignity, I’m going to keep going.

Please, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Take a look at the page containing Vaesen’s explanation of the Investigation skill:

Let me summarise this for you. This page literally says “You can use Investigation to search a room... or find what is obscured.” Then only if you read a dull-looking boxout that’s very easy to miss, the book adds “The investigation skill is not used to find hidden things.”

EXQWEEZE ME?

This sure sounds to me like the “Don’t roll to find stuff” rule on page 177 runs so contrary to everyone's assumptions about how this game works that the writers of the book end up falling into the same trap I did.

And you know who ELSE fell into the same trap I did? (I spin around on my heels and point at some people in the corner of a court room) The very WRITERS OF THE VAESEN ADVENTURE MODULES (everyone gasps).

To me, this is the most damning part of my testimony: I read nine official investigations while I was learning to play the game. If “Not rolling to find clues” or “Important clues being repeated 3 times” was truly part of the Vaesen development team’s practice (important clues being stuff like what Vaesen you’re up against or how is it defeated), it would have been baked into the official adventures. They wouldn’t dare to publish something that breaks the foundational rules of the design.

But what do the official adventures show? They show one or sometimes, sometimes, two clues pointing the way forward for players, hardly ever the suggested three clues, and many of these clues are hidden behind lying NPCs (which is a skill check) or hidden somewhere the players would never think to announce that they are looking, like inside a book. (I produce a clue-looking piece of paper from between two pages of the bible on the judge’s desk, having placed it there before the court was in session. The courtroom explodes in applause.)

Phew! I got really carried away on that fantasy. I hope you did too.

The moral of this story: RPG books are long and exhausting things to write, partly because many publishers need to make their books hundreds of pages long to justify the price point, but they are ALSO instruction manuals that need incredibly clean heirarchies of information, or examples of play that spotlight your easiest-to-miss-rules, but ideally both. Certainly if a rule is so fundamental to the experience that someone missing it can seriously fork their experience, make sure they can’t miss it! Give it a header, a big font, special colours! If a reviewer ends up playing your game wrong, it’s more than likely the developers might be a little responsible, too. (I turn around to the jury, and add "And in this case they were." I wink.)

The other moral of this story: In my humble opinion, Vaesen should never have been published with an Investigation skill in the first place.

You know why horror RPG Mothership doesn’t have hiding or stealth skills? It’s because hiding is so important to Mothership that the developers wanted it to be a conversation at the table and a focal point of the game, and never something that can be collapsed into a dice roll, because a dice roll means players can succeed without engaging in the fiction, or fail to hide even if they had a really good idea. If Vaesen wants players to announce where they’re investigating and simply find stuff, don’t give them a skill! they roll! to find stuff!

(I walk out of the courtroom and high-five the mayor. The paper’s headline the next day? T.T.R.P.G. MAN DECLARED WONDERFUL AGAIN.)

*I am