Animon Story

 

An action RPG has to have a few things in place for me to consider playing it: a good general system, a combat system that isn't too different from the non-combat one, and tools for making fun combat encounters on the fly. You have no idea how many times I've been disappointed on getting all three of these essential points. Pretending that systems that do not provide these three points aren't flawed is a special kind of silliness, but We here at All the Things Under Heaven and Earth try not to engage in spurious self-deception; only truly foundational self-deceptions allowed on this blog, and only for irony's sake!

So the premises of Animon Story is absolutely irresitible to me: it's essentially a digimon/pokemon nostalgia grab, with a promise of a working system for kid and creature creation, evolution system, and a working combat system. Does it live up to these promises?

Eh.

This may have finished off a fundamental love of storygames as most people understand them in my soul.

The book is attractive, feeling good in my hands. The art is appropriately cartoony without being simplistic. The visual design and flow of my eye is unobstructed. It's not the most incredible book I've ever held, but it's a darn nice one.

The character creation is really nicely done, well-organized for running with kids. I was able to help both children make interesting choices about their animon and their kids in a timely manner. My kids were super excited to make animon, and they were a bit weirded out at the thought of having as much detail on the kids as they did, but they quickly warmed up to it after I reassured them it was a good idea to have the kids be cool too. They're here for the monsters, I'm here to see if a game works! All should be well and good, right?

Well, sorta.

One of the problems of a storygame is that it asks players to hurt their characters in favor of the drama. Some players, like myself, are more than happy to do such things. There's a fundamental disassociation in my soul that lets me look at such mechanics with a more detached eye. The character is not me. I want a good story. I better allow the character to get hurt. Even as a child I understood this.

Try telling that to most children.

Go ahead.

Didn't work, did it?

These mechanics are built around the players hurting the bond between kid and animon, and then mending it. Children don't inherently want to do this. Adults don't, either. They want to think they're the kid, they want to have friendships with their creatures, they don't want to sit outside the construct and watch dispassionately. And so the kids bounce off. And I suspect more than just the kids will. Combat has similar things in it, where the pain of getting a good combat is pushed onto the players to create it. It's a bit jarring to see the philosophy for what it is and that I actually do hate it. The loop is too long to allow one to store up a bit of pain and then unleash it quickly.

All of this typical nonsense in storygames, but the real bullshit is that the game does not decide if its combat is sport or war. Combat as sport requires game balance, requires good tools for building encounters on the fly. Combat as war who cares??? Just try to kill the players and let them figure it out. But both require a good stable of opponents and even better adlib mechanics. And Animon Story has neither. The game just has levels and doesn't tell you how they factor in, as if combat was war, but there's a huge dissonance in that Digimon and Pokemon treat combat as sport. 

Oh, and you can't evolve in your first session. That's kind a staple of Digimon. Why is it slowed down here?

I really wanted to like this game. Zak Barouh seems like a nice dude and has a lot of passion for his game. I really appreciate that level of passion from anyone, even if I don't like their stuff. That doesn't make my distaste for the game any better, but instead makes it less palatable. This is a guy who clearly wanted to design something joyful. And maybe it does for other people!

But all I got out of this was disappointment.

Such a shame.

Marvel Dice Throne

So this happened on Christmas.

Like I've said before, Dice Throne is what I call a treadmill game: the goal of the designers is to get you to keep buying more stuff from them to keep kitting out your modular experience. If it’s done poorly you got something like Marvel Champions: just ooooone mooore expansion and then the game will be more than acceptable! And given how much money that means, it’s never acceptable!!! EVER. From my Season One review you’ll know I already found that set much more than acceptable: I used it almost every day for a year before wanting another box. I wanted to get Season Two, but I got outvoted for the Marvel box by certain smaller compatriots.

Last note: I am a weary Marvel fan. I began as a precocious child who called Marvel editors to chat (see here for more on that) to a jaded post-One More Day bitter man. I do not like most of Marvel’s modern comics, buy Rippaverse and Alterna, and at this point I await the day Marvel’s stupid decisions catch up with them and they decide they want to compete with manga, which is currently stomping the shit out of them, and good riddance. 

Really the last note: I know Marvel is a jerk to work with. They have a rep in the TTRPG community as divas. So the Dice Throne people, should they read this, need to understand who the vitriol is really aimed at. The Dice Throne folks, in my opinion, aren’t trying to get us to buy again so much as let the incredibly stuck up and arrogant pricks at Marvel know they’ll play ball. Some will rankle hard at me saying it, but Marvel’s arrogance in licensing is a poorly kept secret.

So we’re going to get the man-bitching out of the way: the character selection is… unfortunate. No Peter Parker, Steve Rogers, or Tony Stark is a “we don’t want to make money!” move, flat. With the glaring exception of Captain Marvel I do not mind the rest of the choices. But Captain Marvel being in the box hurts my already jaded soul. Obviously the gambit paid off, coz these incredibly talented people got to make the X-Men box! But man the gambit, while necessary, is painful.

The graphic design feels weird to me this time around. There is so much freaking purple everywhere, which for whatever reason bothers me. The design of the symbols can also be really busy, particularly on Scarlet Witch and Loki. Mileage (and taste) may vary, of course, but this is my blog, so the graphic design isn’t as much to my taste as the cleaner, less purple, Season One box. 

All that’s (not) well and probably a bit grating to read. What do I think of the one thing anyone who reads this blog knows I actually care about: the design? Is this treadmill treating me well? Will I buy more? Yes, yes, and definitely yes! Allow me to elucidate, oh you who put up with my bitching. 

I love the character designs for this box, for two reasons. As a singular box these characters are really fun to play, especially Captain Marvel! Anyone picking up this box is going to get a truly varied set of characters. From “punch me, I dare you” Black Panther, to Loki, who made my brother CACKLE in glee as he played him, there isn’t a dud in the box. It’s not there. If anything I am clicking with these characters faster than Season One! Now, granted, this ain’t my first rodeo with the game, but several characters (I’m looking at you, Moon Elf and Treant) from Season One I totally bounced off for the first six months. That simply didn’t happen here. Make of that what you will. I will write more the characters in follow up posts, but for now I happily can say I love all of them.

As a TTRPG designer who has made a whole ten bucks (literally), I found myself a better designer after playing this box. I didn’t comment all that much on the particular characters in Season One coz I honestly didn’t have much to say, beyond the characters worked extremely well! Playing this box, however, I found myself in an entirely different world. I actually felt disoriented after the first game, coz the style was so different. CP ramping was almost non-existent, defensive abilities weren’t as powerful, and base damage was a lot higher. The games were faster, much faster than I was used to. After a few games I found myself leaning into the new style, learning to appreciate that I couldn't lean on my defense and making the most of the main roll phase. There's an urgency, a demand to focus on the right now, that isn't in the season one box. What you prefer does actually come down to taste, not an objective standard: I've played with people who hate the Marvel box for the very reasons that make it good, and who would love Season One for the same reasons they hate the Marvel box.

That.

Is.

A. Fantatstic.

Success!!!!

I've had more conversations with people about their tastes between these two boxes than you'd expect. What's more it's not even "Oh such and such box is better, I prefer the design style of such and such box." Good game design drives you straight into the subjective, far far away from whether or not the game itself has any merit. You talk with your friends coz the objective reality has been handled for you.

As far as balance between the season one and Marvel box I got, on a casual level they hold up really well. Ninja's two outings against Thor was so inhumanly painful for him I was shooting Blake inappropriate jokes for awhile, laughing about how Ninja clearly wanted a... piece... of  Thor. Yeah, a piece. We'll just say that. It was hilariously awful for Thor. But at the same time Scarlet Witch can tear into everyone, and there's no general feeling that anyone is actually outmatched here. Are there characters who are objectively better than others? Sure. Can I leverage a viable strategy to get around it? Definitely. That's not a small thing to achieve.

So, let's sum this up. Not only did the Dice Throne folks manage to make a product with Marvel (who not only don't actually care about their characters but also are notoriously picky and unrealistic in their goals), not only did they make a fantastic box that I find to be a triumph of design, not only is it balanced with the box I already had, but they get to do it again with the upcoming X-Men box. I hope the designers patted themselves on the back, coz man they deserved it.