Dark Souls RPG Reflections

 

Welcome back! Good to see you! Today we go over my thoughts on the Dark Souls RPG, as I start contemplating the next campaign.

The Dark Souls RPG has a lot of promise. Like, the kind of promise I'm willing to hack around to accommodate. So I'm not pretending that this is a perfect game, but I'm not aware of too many games that do this one loop so well. It's half-baked, but the parts that are fully cooked are so good that I can't help myself.

The Way It Actually Works

Dark Souls is a d20 game that isn't about the d20, which is the biggest compliment I can give. D20's are swingy as hell, and this game adds in one wrinkle to the decision: Position (HP). If you fail the roll, you have to decide if it's worth spending Position to succeed. The d20 informs your decision, but it isn't the core decision. Provided the GM provides good information... you now have one heck of a dilema on your hands. Because Position is so fragile in surprise situations, how do you decide which tasks are worth succeeding or failing on? 

The decision wouldn't matter as much if it wasn't for just how brutal the damage is. Damage in Dark Souls is around double the damage of 5e, so screwing up rolls in this game can lead to insta-death very quickly. And there's that freaking Wisdom save whenever you die, that does random things to your character if you fail it.. .and you're almost assuredly going to. Each death changes you, for better or for worse, and you simply don't know what the consequences of death might be.

So the core loop, properly played, is this series of calculated gambles, to either allow the failure or to force a success. Position tells you how much leeway you have, and when you die, it changes you, making the next run different. It is a constant, low thrum of anxiety and dread.

It's awesome.

And there's nothing like it, to the best of my knowledge, in the TTRPG space. Not quite so elegantly built, as your Position is your health. Players have an immediate idea of what they're doing, when they're sacrificing Position. The tension is incredible. And if this one thing was the only thing in the game, it would be awesome. 

The combat spends for Position (extra damage and extra movement) are understated, but they're extremely useful, especially the movement one. Do not estimate how useful it is to have your speed doubled for a paltry amount of Position, especially if you have a reach weapon. It is for this reason I think the Dark Souls RPG is a grid and minis game: players have issue trying to figure out just how useful the movement spend is, unless they're looking at it and realizing "Waitasec, I can legitimately not be around for the monsters, and force them to come to me." Seeing it is better than any reminder. However, the core “how much should I spend before the GM utterly ruins me” is still quite present. 

This Game Has a Right Way to Play It

It is a mudcore dungeoncralwer. You're playing characters who are perpetually stressed-out, pushing their luck, and hoping they can bank up enough souls to level up at a bonfire, before dying. "Muh story" people really need to go find another game. It won't work like that.

HOWEVER.

The rest of the game has a hard time matching up with this loop. Some of it's perfect too. Some of it's... imperfect... and some of it's just outright bad. The fact that the outright bad has to do with the shit editing, making this a book I am forced to write in, is unforgivable. This is a pretty book and I have to mark it up. 

Steamforged, get ready for that rant. Coz it’s coming and I do not intend to be gentle. This is shameful stuff. 

The Souls System

The souls system, wherein XP and money are collected, is just on the right side of detail. The biggest change is that souls are spent to level up, resetting them to zero. This means that going from level 2 to level 3 doesn't require another 600 souls, but another 900. I cannot overstate just how profound an impact this one change has on the game. The stakes were clarified at the table so powerfully and simply, that almost this alone would have made a Dark Souls game. My players would laugh when they died, because the souls were gone, and they knew that they had screwed up. The punishment was so over-the-top and ridiculous that the players would laugh to tears... or at least I think it was laughter. They kept playing! The horrible punishment forced them to try to learn to navigate the environment. 

Skills

Skills is a spot where the game rules definitely needed to be more fleshed out... to the point where I considered just doing the 3.5 skill system, or adapting it somehow. There was some guidance on how to adjudicate challenges outside of combat in the core book... but it's not a lot. Folks, this is mudcore OSR, and that's that. And the rules for adjudicating mudcore dungeoncrawl are... adequate. They're not terrible. But they're not good. I wanted crunch here, to support me as I played. Maybe you won't, but it came up a lot for me, personally. The "talk your way through the puzzle" sounds nice, until you have to do it a lot. I get exhausted of it. I'd rather have rules to look up and learn. "Find what works for you" is nice... until you have to do it all the time. And this game actually has the depth in its loop to handle crunch... and it doesn't have it. And it should.

The Organization of this Book Makes Me Angry

Of all the things that are a sin in this book, it's the absolutely abysmal organization that does it for me. It goes from "why isn't this table featured more prominently" to "THIS IS UTTER GARBAGE".

The biggest offender, by far, is the miserable lack of page references in the Locations section, combined with the utterly asinine monster organization. There's all these tables with monsters, with no page reference numbers. Nothing. You have to climb through, (and this is true of all THREE books) and figure out where the monster is. And, since the monsters aren't alphebatized, but are instead in "groupings" like "undead", "beasts", "denizens"... and I don't think even the monsters organizations are freaking alphabetized either. It's a nightmare finding monsters.

I have to write the numbers into the book in order for the most important section in the book (for GMs) to be usable! The book's poor organization requires it, and that pisses me off. This is a premium book, one I do not want to make marks in, and instead I'm having to scrawl page numbers because the editors were utter idiots. Utter. Fucking. Idiots. Steamforged really should be ashamed of themselves, but we know that that's not something the company as a whole is good at.

It's not any better with the items. The types of items are not necessarily intuitive, and they're not organized alphabetically either. This makes finding things... really really really hard. And I hate it. It's not an absolute deal breaker, but I'm more than a few months into using this book and I am absolutely not used to it yet. It takes me so much work to do what should be a simple look up, and I have no idea why they did it this way.

The Advice is Stupid

There are.... two...?  Two, I think. Lines of good advice in the book.

Do what you want with this game, whatever works for you, is bullshit advice. It indicates a nervousness about having a vision for your game.

The game is clearly mudcore oldschool. It's not a question. The mechanics, if played straight, produce a brilliantly flawed mudcore experience.

And about two lines of the advice serves this.

The rest is just "what do you want your story to be like" and "this game is yours" nonsense.

It is most of the advice in the books. All three of them.

There is no advice on how to make monsters. You have to go find other 5e products for that. Fortunately the monster design itself is pretty darn good, so you don't have to worry about this so much but... this is an outright glaring absence in the game's advice and design.

This Game Is Flawed

There is so much to recommend this game. It is a masterclass in getting players of any experience level invested. When we got done with our short little game, the players all immediately said they wanted to come back to it, after our Pathfinder 2e excursion. One of the players and I swap GMing duties, and you don't pass that kind of thing up. However, we're fully invested in this. I'm making a bigger map. Something we can chip away at as the months and years go on. I'm putting ideas together and I'm really excited. What so few games get right (the essentials), the Dark Souls RPG lands with aplomb.

However, the rest of the game is a mess. A shamefully hard to use mess. Like, the book is fundamentally flawed in its organization, to a degree that is an outright failure on Steamforged's part.

If you're willing to put in the work, you have one of the best experiences you'll ever have for a conventional RPG. If you don't... I really can't blame you, this book's organization is a shame before God and man.

Why Do You Care So Much???

This is a fair question! Why bother?

There isn't a rational answer and I won't pretend otherwise.

However.

I don't have to care if I'm being rational, and neither do you. And the answer may be interesting to you.

Some Things Just Fit

Aesthetics are supra-rational. They are what rationality is derived from. For whatever reason, the visual and narrative aesthetics of Dark Souls is home in a way that no other pre-established setting is. And the game's mechanics for this TTRPG evoke that feeling for me: ruined grandeur, something beautiful turned to something rotted. Which automatically creates this need to make it right again, even if you doubt it can ever be done. For whatever reason this game evokes that sentiment out of me, and I am better person for experiencing it.

One day the flame will return, and all will be well.

Now, that may not be the reason to forgive a game its many flaws for you, but it sure is for me.

And it really does come down to that.

Here I stop. If you I do not see you next week, I do not blame you. It is not easy road.

Dark Souls: Initial Report Session the Last

 

With their mission clear ("find the dragon and stab it with the magical spear, so you can whittle it down"), Hazbil and Fizbun come into a large room, filled with pillars and a vaulted ceiling. There's a wooden bridge at one end of the room, leading out into the utterly frozen wasteland, with another tower across the way. There's holes in the ceiling big enough for "their" dragon to poke his head and roast them alive.

I announced the DC for Stealth to go check out the wooden bridge: 24. Hazbil and Fizbun about burn out all their Position passing the check.

They get to the bridge, which is exposed to the cold that killed them almost instantly earlier. I make them a deal: they burn enough Position, they can cross the bridge, but it destroys their Stealth Check.

The dragon comes up behind them as they cross. They roll Initiative, and fail just closely enough to where they can burn the Position necessary to go before the dragon.... and thus roll for their combat Position. Hazbil has a higher Strength than Fizbun, so he lugs the spear right at the thing, and passes the thing pretty easily. With the spear that keeps the dragon's Position from resetting firmly lodged in it. Normally, I would make the rest of the campaign about them leveling up for this one boss fight. I certainly could have prepped that.

But the guy playing Fizbun really wants to run some Pathfinder, and I don't get people wanting to run games for me terribly often.

So.

We skipped that part.

We guessed it would take about eight tries to take the dragon down. The dragon began to disintegrate under the influence of the Flame. Fizbun, being a pyromancer, volunteered to take the Flame on, as he had some Flame resistance. But he needed help getting up the stairs to the Kiln. So they stumbled up to the Kiln, and Fizbun, the asshole who closed doors, fell into the Kiln at the top of the tower.

Hazbil looked down from the tower. The ice was starting to melt... and there was a ton of it. He would need to move fast if he wanted to get to the nearby mountains.

Thoughts on the System

By the end of this session,  the players had come to a different appreciate of the Position system. At any point in time, they could pass a roll. It was a question of whether or not they had the resources to do so. This means that the game becomes a series of rough calculate risks.

Or it could.

Could.

But, if you're not running the game as an old school mudcrawl.... this system just isn't going to work. Period. If you're not pitting the time against the Position of the players... there's no tension. The usual railroading 5e is known for just won't work here. You have to present real choices that require constant dice rolls for the system to function.

Will We Run This Game Again?

Fuck yes we will. It's not perfect (I made up the encounter dice), but my goodness it does mudcrawling so well, and I will happily draw up another map for it. However, I would do a few things differently:

Assign more random tables to different parts of the map. I only really used two, and that was a mistake. Players need more zones, where they can go and hide, or grind and level up. Things like that.

I would want to actually come up with a good boss fight "mechanic". Not sure how to do that, yet, but the core choices in this game  warrant some extra work. I think I would set up a BOTW/TOTK style map, with factions set up and whatnot. I can't really get other players to do faction play in the world, due to physical constraints, or I would.

I'll write a bit about Pathfinder 2e next. I have my own very loud and snooty opinions on that game, so we'll see how that goes.

Dark Souls: Fourth Session Report

 

Real Life Sucks

It's been a few weeks, because real life caught up hard, and we just couldn't play. Today we got:

Hazbil, level four knight

Fizbun, level three pyromancer

I pull up a new "location" from the Core Book: Archdragon Peak, page 269. I wanted to make the place feel different as they got close to the dragon. No, I haven't talked about the dragon yet, but I will in a minute.

Play!

Hazbil and Fizbun return to the door from last session, with the purple sign right in the doorway. Hazbil, as  has to burn Position to pass  the Wisdom Save that's permanently on him, to touch all bad summoning signs. With Fizbun granting advantage, Hazbil passes. They jump the sign and enter the room.

Standing across from them is a figure. "You are now in the Dragon's Keep, why should you stay?" Hazbil and Fizbun feel a compulsion to walk over the Purple Sign as they leave through the door they just entered. Both of them, knowing the summoned knight would get a free attack, burned a ton of Position to pass the save.

The figure seemed impressed at their resilience. "Very good, why should you stay?"

"And walk over the purple sign again?" both Hazbil and Fizbun asked, scoffing at him. He smiles at them, and vanishes. It's a Large Soul, 20,000 souls apiece! Hazbil and Fizbun went back to the previous bonfire, and are both now level 5! Hazbil has 3,400 Souls, only 10,600 to go! I cackle. The resetting of the souls counter is honestly amazing, especially since you lose the souls upon death.

There's a door, which they check: wooden, unlocked, not trapped. They open up the door, and burn the Position to make the Perception check: two wyverns, sitting on the roof! They manage to sneak into the large room, and take up positions. Fizbun realizes the wyeverns are immune to fire, so he decides they'll try and make a distraction, and then bottlneck the wyverns. He shoots off a fireball at a nearby pillar.

The wyverns look down, and don't see what made the fire. They jump into the air... and then land on the roof. Both Hazbil and Fizbun barely evade, getting back into the previous room. Fizbun runs up  the purple sign and touches  it, planning to lure the summoned knight into combat with the wyverns, who charge. Hazbil preps his greatsword, and  gets three swings. And he puts his back into it. He puts almost every bit of Position he can into taking out one of the wyverns. 

Hazbil barely bruises the wyvern, with three hard hits: 20+ damage a shot. And it just isn't enough.

The first wyvern sticks its mouth through the doorway and spits fire. Even making the save, Fizbun and Hazbil die immediately. They both wake up at the bonfire. Fizbun fails the Wisdom save, -1 to his Strength. Hazbil also fails the Wisdom save, gets a -2 to his Charisma

As far as Hazbil and  Fizbun can remember, there's two options: attack the lizards who stomped on them a few times, or go back after the wyverns. They have no idea that it's actually the same difficulty level... but I know! And I try not to laugh.

They sneak back down to the wreckage where the giant lizards were... and Fizbun fails the stealth check. The lizard charges, hits Hazbil, 1 shots him! Fizbun rushes up the stairs, getting away from the lizard and resetting time. Hazbil comes back to at the bonfire, and  gets a -1 to Initiative. Honestly, people are just laughing, almost helplessly, at the death spiral that's in this game. It's so blatantly unfair that my players are almost pissing themselves laughing at times.

They go back, get a sneak attack in on the lizard, getting two full rounds of wailing on the one lizard. They know if they let live, they die. They get it to 75 damage. Which is... not enough. It just isn't.

The lizard takes a quick breath in. Breath weapon. Dead.

Hazbil -1 Passive Perception

Fizbun -1 Wisdom

They realize they just don't have the firepower to go after the lizards... or the wyverns. Just as they're about to take a passage to the right, I reminded them they have another way they can go too: back where the scythe had come down and they'd gotten jumped by their first summon. They'd just run out of their without really checking the room.. They decided to retrace their steps, running past the lizards successfully. 

They meet another person named Ghorm, who has a spear he says can pin the target in time, and he has a target in mind: there's a dragon in this castle, who holds The Last Flame.  If they kill it, the frozen world outside will thaw, and they'll be able to leave.

After convincing Fizbun that being able to leave the castle is good idea, they decide to go for it! Unthawing the world sounds like a great idea, even to Fizbun.

Reflections

It's here where "encounter balance" starts to rear its ugly head: Dark Souls is about combat, and you have to be willing to let differing areas have different difficult levels. I didn't do this, so I thought I'd throw that time-sticking spear in to even the odds in finishing the adventure. When I next play, I'll put multiple tables into the levels, allowing for farming in certain areas, and risks to be taken in others. It's a learning process, but a very enjoyable one.

Dark Souls: Third Session Report

 

This third session of Dark Souls went really well! We have:

• Hazbil the Knight. Starts at level 2, ends the session at level 4.
• Fizbun the Pyromancer. Starts at level 2, ends the session at level 3
• Onely the Deprived. Starts at level three, ends the session at level 3.

Throughout this session, Onely donates all of his souls to Hazbil, to try and get him to level 4, so that he can start wielding the Astora greatsword.

Also: my exact memory is fuzzy. It's been a long week. I remember what happened, but my connective tissue may be spotty.

The Adventure

At the end of last session they were all shredded by a mysterious red spirit, and reappeared at the second bonfire. The door right in front of them will lead back to that They go down the door to the right. A ghostly spirit stands there, and says "Tell me why you're worthy." They answer, and the spirit likes the answers. It vanishes into all three of them, and they have a bunch of souls now.

There's two doors, left and right. Fizbun goes right, finds an open portcullis, which leads out to a world of utter ice. Onely goes to the left door and finds a golden sign. Onely makes Arcana, and realizes gold is good. He touches it, and out comes a knight, who offers his service.

They go back to the room with the red sign, jump the red spirit that comes out, and chew right through him. The golden knight vanishes. Hazbil and Fizbun now have enough souls to level up, so they go back through the door and Fizbun is now level three. The tension of not being able to spend souls to level up is discussed.

They go back up to the door with the golden knight to see if the sign reset. It has. But standing there is a freakishly tall, gaunt figure, who smiles hungrily at Onely... who smiles back. They stare at each other a minute, and the tall figure introduces himself as Ghorm. He asks if they can look for someone whistling a tune, to a song he can't remember anymore. The players say they will.

They go where they saw Ghorm come from, and find a door to the right, and a staircase to the left. Fizbun checks the door, and when he finds that it's fine, he opens it up, to find the Pyromancy spell Fireburst: damage in a cone, no Position needs to be spent to activate it. He equips it immediately. He goes goes round the corner to find a huge door. He calls the others to him, and they just... open the door..

And freeze solid. The wind blows the door open, and they die instantly. Lose all their souls... and that hurts. They realize they never actually checked the door, they just opened it, without a second thought. I smile cruelly.

They go and close the door to keep the wind from getting into the rest of the complex, and succeed. There's a stair to the left, and they go up... and Hazbil starts hearing a voice to touch the purple summon sign up there. He doesn't. They go beyond it, and find another spirit who asks them to tell them why they're worthy. They give different answers, the spirit approves, and now they have a bunch more souls... and Hazbil goes and touches the purple sign. They kill the spirit who comes out, and now Hazbil has enough souls to get to level four, which would let him use the Astora greatsword they picked up for him in session two. They go and cash in. 

When they go back to the staircase with the purple sign, they find another stranger: Nebt, who wants to put a soul to rest with a  gift of his favorite whip. Which Fizbun happens to have. Fizbun gives it for a ton of souls.

They manage to keep Hazbil from touching the purple sign again, and go beyond it. There's another staircase to the left (leading back to where the red sign was) and two doors to the right. Fizbun checks the rightmost door: it's trapped, designed to put in more of that freezing cold air. The other-right door leads to a place where there's just a bunch of wreckage and a 60 foot chain. They manage to jam the trap on the rightmost door, and get through.

Sitting next to other side of the door, biting his nails, was Touless... who was looking for a flower. A rare rare flower. He thanked them for opening the door, because he didn't know how, and started to walk through. Onely tried to stop him. Touless drew a knife, and gently asked to be let loose.

Fizbun went beyond, and found a larger area, with three doors, one at the bottom of a flight of stairs. He opened that door.

Onto a crystal lizard's ass.

Fizbun gently closed the door.

He checked the other two doors, and found one had a purple sign right up against the door. Onely, wanting a fight, went and stepped on it, against everyone else's wishes.

The materializing spirit was hit with wave upon wave of steel and a newly discovered fire spray... which almost killed Onely. Fizbun told Onely he ever did that again he would kill him.

Takeways

Three sessions in, and they're learning the game. Fights are now heavily one-sided affairs when they're engaged in, and avoided at all costs otherwise.... except when Onely wants just a few more souls. The addition of the NPCs from the random rolls made the tone here a lot different, but it was a welcome break.

This game is showing depth. And we're having a blast.

The session ended with a clash of steel and ego. Against the party's wishes, Onely triggered a purple summon sign. The resulting spirit nearly claimed his life, leading to the first real crack in the party's facade: Fizbun’s fire-laced threat. The honeymoon phase of the campaign is officially over."

Dark Souls: Second Play Session Report

So the players agreed to play through a short game of Dark Souls after the utter joy that was the first session! We rotate GMs, and the other GM had a campaign in mind, but he was having a good time, and said he would be happy to wait a few more weeks as we finish this up. I realized I had forgotten to include the summoning signs in my first session (which are in the core rulebook as an option rule) and thus fixed that as well.

Today we added Onely, the Deprived! Deprived is a special class in Dark Souls: you start with pretty much nothing, but can basically build your own class as you go. Obviously, the further along you go, the more broken this becomes, but... let's be honest... you gotta make that far. And given that you can go hollow and just lose the character... it is actually a risk.

Hazbil and Fizbun reappeared at the first bonfire, and their way back to the room before the undead hounds that had killed them. They realized they'd never really searched this room, they'd just gone through the door. Searching, they found a secret, third door! How about that! Fizbun checked the door, found it was unlocked and trapped. He realized there was a counterweight system, so something was going to swing through the door at him. By this time Onely had shown up. After some short introductions, Fizbun told everyone to get clear, and he opened the door. Down came a huge scythe, which would assuredly have cut any of them in half. 

Hazbil and Onely stepped through the door, around the scythe. Hazbil stepped onto a purple summon sign... and out stepped a purple warrior with a scythe. In one swing Hazbil was dead.  

Fizbun slammed the door, trapping Onely with the mysterious attacker. The scythe  swung back in into place with the close of the door. Onely pushed it into the scythe, badly wounding the attacker... and was almost killed by the returning swing. Onely hit the creature in the face, and stunned it with a shout. He pushed it back into the way of the scythe. 

Onely reopened the door. 

The attacker was cut in half.

Onely looted a sword and smaller scythe off the corpse, and went back to the bonfire. Hazbil got his Strength back and then some from the bonfire warp. Hazbil and Onely had also gotten a bunch of souls from the death of the purple scythe-wielder, more than enough to level up. Fizbun... nope. You don't get souls for shutting the door and running away. Sorry. Not part of the combat. Hazbil took the sword, which granted bonus damage on the next hit against an attacker, and Onely kept the scythe, which allowed him to add damage onto an attack.

It was here that a rule point was clarified to me: you spend the souls to level up. While this is accurate to the video games, it means that leveling up in the Dark Souls TTRPG is a lot harder than in its 5e forbearer. And, since the blood stains were removed, if you die, you just lose the remaining souls, outright. I decided to run that rule RAW for the moment, but it is a curious change. Does make everyone more cautious though! Once you get a good amount of souls you need to find a bonfire and cash them in quick. The fact that it cuts out farming by grinding combats and boring everyone to tears is a plus, even if accuracy is lowered as a result.

They went back to the room of dogs, burst through the door, and earned the surprise round. Fizbun shot off a fireball... which did almost no damage. At all. Hazbil killed two of the four dogs in that opening round. He went before everyone else in the next round, and killed another dog. The remaining dog missed. Onely killed the dog in one shot. Revenge was sweet. They found a door, Fizbun rolled a nat 20 on the roll to check it... only to be told there was nothing wrong with it.

There was a staircase to the left, and a long hallway with alcoves to the right... which had a mysterious voice, ringing in their heads. They went to the right, and found a greatsword that Hazbil was ALMOST qualified for, so he kept it, along with a whip... and the soul of a lost maiden fighter, who gave them her souls. Fizbun kept the whip.

They came to a fork in the complex: left, towards a large staircase, or right, to a door. They went left, wary of doors. Who can blame them?

"Hello, fellow travellers." A creepy corpse stood up, with a large pack on his back. His name was Telvro, and he was now stuck in this "Keep of the Dragon" with them. He sold them stuff...

And that's when the players asked if they could sell each other stuff too, thus gaining souls from it. I didn't see why not, it's not that big a jump from the video games, where you can buy weapons for souls. They swapped equipment around, so specific people could level faster... and then Onely made Hazbil a deal. If Hazbil gave Onely his extra longsword, Onely would give him 100% of all souls necessary to get to level three. See, selling the longsword would allow Onely to level up. They asked me if this was kosher and again, why not? The longsword is gone. They can't use it. That someone levels up means their souls are spent. I don't know if anyone else would allow this, but I mean, the gamebook keeps telling me to make this thing my own! So here I am, doing that!

The group went up the stairs  and found a bonfire. Hooray! They also found another staircase to the left, with a door before them and to the right. They decided to go back down the other staircase, and opened that door they had avoided before.

Aaaaaand they found those cavern lizards from the first session. They slammed the door hurriedly, but the lizards rammed the wall... and brought the ceiling down. See, now that little piece of unfairness was adapted from The Tome of Journeys, where it says you can bring walls down for extra damage. Didn't seem like that much of a stretch to rule that the cavern lizards could just blow right through the wall and bring the ceiling down. Onely tried to argue that he could ignore the first killing blow in an encounter. I told him in the chilliest of tones that that was stupid: it was a caved-in ceiling, not a sword swing. No. Absolutely not. Everyone else laughed. Onely laughed and shrugged.

Everyone woke up back at the second bonfire they had just found. They checked the other staircase, only to find that the cavern lizards had broken through and were stomping around. They ran back up the stairs, but were followed by the cavern lizard. Desperate, they went through door on their left, praying this wall would hold.

It did.

But Hazbill accidentally stepped on a red summoning sign. And out stepped a red knight, and tore through them in an absolute whirlwind of death, as this knight could spend Position... and did. And just annihilated them all. 

They all reappeared the second bonfire.

Updated Encounter Rolls

So I realized I missed a few things, and edited the table. If you're using this, lemme know how it goes! 

Roll 1d12 and d20 every other turn:

**d12 (Events):**
- 1-2: Monster
- 3: Trap
- 4-5: Soul
- 6: Item
- 7: Bonfire chance (reroll d8; 1 = bonfire)
- 8-9: NPC (core book)
- 10-12: Nothing

**d20 (Signs):**
- 1: Purple Summon Sign
- 2: Red Summon Sign
- 3: Golden Summon Sign
- 4: White Summon Sign
- 5-20: Nothing

Dark Souls RPG: First Session Play Report

 

So we ran a test session of the Dark Souls RPG Saturday. Two players (Billy, Sir Hazbil the Knight, and Nate, Fizbun the Pyromancer). It had been awhile since I had played this game, and it was a blast! We laughed, we laughed, we cringed hard, and laughed more. Despite me having all three books in the line, we only used the core. Mine's shiny. It's so nice. We made characters and played for a little while. I grabbed a random map off the web, printed it off, and resolved to use my encounter dice to populate it as we went. I grabbed the Cathedral of the Deep from page 248 of the Core Book for the random monsters and other stuff.

Character Generation

This was a breeze. The options were "lacking", in the sense that you just had prepackaged stuff that you picked from, with a lot of illusory choice, but it sure makes character creation quick. 

Random Encounter Dice

Now, there are two ways that the book sort of presents prepping an adventure: make a site or a typical "trad" storygame. I cannot overemphasize how poorly the book serves both approaches, and if I had a true and actual criticism of this game, it would be this lukewarm support in lieu of "figure it out yourself". Fortunately, I have designed my own games and have read tons of OSR stuff, so I just took a few ideas and ran with them. I had some ideas on how I might do that.

I figured out quickly that my initial ideas on random encounters for Dark Souls wouldn't capture the full scope of the game. At all. I also hate the fact that there isn't an easy way to just randomly generate equipment. That's going to trip me up later. 

But, for now, I decided to go with two dice - d8 and d20 - rolled every other turn, in areas you have not explored.

Step 1: The Danger Check (d8)

Roll	Result
1–2	Monster: Roll on the Cathedral of the Deep table (p. 248).
3	Trap: Electric doorknobs, mimics, or pressure plates.
4	Soul: A Fading Soul or Large Soul of a Deserted Corpse.
5	Item: Random equipment or "rubbish."
6	Bonfire: Only if you confirm with a second "1" on a d8.
7–8	Nothing: Eerie silence... for now.

Step 2: The World Tendency (d20)

Roll	Result
1–3	Summon Sign: Roll for Purple (Mad), Red (Hostile), or Gold (Sunbro).
4	White Sign: Restores one player and one ally to full Position.
5–7	Shopkeep: A hollow merchant with overpriced Moss Clumps.
8–20	The Dark: No cosmic interference this turn.

The Adventure

Sir Hazbil and Fizbun came to around a bonfire, in a room that was locked from the outside. Sir Hazbil attempted to pop the doorknob off with his sword and managed to just get clear in time to not get the full electric shock: the door was trapped! Fizbun refused to spend position to set the wooden door on fire.. so Sir Hazbil hacked the door open. They found a room filled with rotting furniture. Sir Hazbil opened the next door, only to find himself staring up at huge two cavern lizards... who were leering at him. Sir Hazbil charged, connected with his longsword... and the cavern lizard didn't even flinch. He squashed Sir Hazbil without even trying.

Fizbun gently closed the door. 

And went back to the bonfire. Sir Hazbil was somehow feeling hardier (his Position/HP max had gone from 13 to 16). Only to find the door had restored itself as soon as he went in. They rehacked the door open, and started checking around... only to find there was a secret door in the same room their bonfire. They came out into a chamber with two doors, one to the front and one to the right.

Fizbun opened the door onto a lovely view of a cavern lizard's ass.

Fizbun gently closed the door.

They tried the other door, and found four undead hounds were minding their own business... and somehow they hadn't disturbed them. The hounds stood between them and another door to the front and a staircase to the left. So Sir Hazbil charged! Fizbun actually threw flame this time! They were putting up a good fight... until an unlucky crit took Sir Hazbil down. By that time there were two hounds and one of them was badly injured, so Fizbun figured he could finish them off.

Fizbun was wrong.

They both woke up at the bonfire. This time Sir Hazbil was weaker... and could no longer wear his armor. His respawning had weakened his Strength score by 1, making him unable to wear the Knight's Armor! Fizbun managed to get a -1 to his Charisma score... which is what he uses to cast spells.

We laughed our asses off.

And called it a session, coz Billy had to go.

Gameplay

The people who say this game doesn't play well are lying. They just are. There's more than a few reviews of this game that claim to have direct play experience that are absolutely lying their asses off, or are filled with players so impossibly stupid that I worry for their ability to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. And I say this because this game ran really smoothly! Again! With a completely different group!

So Position is used for three things: improve your d20 roll, 1 for 1 (no limit), improve your damage, 1 for 1 (minimum of 5), and improve speed, 1 for 5 extra feet (can't do more than double speed). 

If your Position drops to 0 you die and go back to the last bonfire... where you have to roll to see if something random (mostly awful) happens to you. It's a DC 18 Wisdom save. You're gonna fail it a lot.

Burning Position/HP to improve rolls is an incredible thing to do. Each failed roll (and there were a lot of them) the question became: given that getting hitting by a sneak attack right now would send me back to the bonfire, do I burn the health now, making a future possible hit worse, or do I whiff and hope the monster misses? Not all the monsters can burn Position like the Players can, and I didn't throw any of those at the Players, so they didn't have to balance that out. Yet. But each Player roll was intense. And this is the only game I have ever played that has justified a passive defense for the players: you can't spend Position on the GM's attack roll, so it's a genuine guess as to what could happen! The players intuited this problem immediately and had a great time measuring risk. We'll see what happens as they go through the dungeon. They're worse off than they were before, mechanically, but now the shock has worn off. 

We will see what the players do next week. But we had a blast. Especially Billy, who now is walking around naked, with a shield. His AC is now lower than the pyromancer's.

What could go wrong?

The Dark Souls RPG

 

Before we get into my thoughts on this game we need to go over my opinion of “trad” games, such as modern DnD, Pathfinder, and derivatives such as the Power Rangers RPG and the like. We’ll also need to talk about the other RPGs that are openly based on Soulslike games. It’s not exactly a spicy and original take but without knowing my opinion on both Trad and games inspired by Dark Souls my comments on the Dark Souls RPG are going sound odd.

Spoiler: I like the game. Kinda.

No, I wasn’t sent a review copy.

No, the game is not perfect, it has its very obvious flaws. Yes, shame on Steamforged for not taking more time!

But hear me out.

Trad games (as defined by this blog post) are classified in part as games where the  GM is active and the players are reactive. The game rules have a giant hole where storygames, the OSR, and classic games have a turn structure. Whether it be PBTA Moves, Burning Wheel’s round robin style of showcasing player Beliefs, BDnD’s turn structure, etc, most RPGs have some pretty detailed rules on how to handle the story as a part of the game. It’s actually pretty common for RPGs, if you take the hobby as a whole.

But not Trad. There’s a big gaping hole in that area, by and large, because one of two things are expected: either your GM has come up with his own little structure/flowchart/map or whatever, or he bought an adventure so he didn’t have to prep for God knows how many hours.

Don’t balk at that. Even a cursory glance at DnD 3.5 and up reveals that is the assumed state of play. Hours are assumed to be spent by the GM in prepping a showcase of goodies that players of the “wrong” (aka people who are allergic being reactive) persuasion will wreck within minutes. Ironically enough if you hand one of these ornery players a game of literally any other type they become fantastic players, by and large. This is Trad’s greatest disadvantage: if a player wants to do more than react to whatever the GM has in mind they’re going to create waves, regardless of how much the GM communicates with them.

So, now you know my opinion on Trad games.

Dark Souls the RPG is the best Trad game I’ve personally ever read.

There are a lot of games based off of Dark Souls. I’ve played some, and enjoyed them. I’ve read more than a few, more than I can remember right now, so I have a… decently(?)… educated opinion on the subject. These games try to take the feeling of Dark Souls and explore it on their own terms. One of these games, Bleak Spirit, is one of my favorite games. So I’m not here to talk against the many adaptations. They’re good games in their own right, by and large.

But Dark Souls the RPG is the most faithful adaptation that I, personally, have ever read. 

It’s not close either.

I’ve now made two astoundingly ridiculous sounding claims. Let’s take them in reverse order.

Dark Souls the RPG is the most faithful adaptation that I, personally, have ever read, for an astoundingly simple reason: with the exception of class features every single mechanical element of the game is an in-game object. You don’t gain spells, can’t just grab whatever weapons you want, you find them! Souls can be scattered throughout the world. Even your backstory is a part of the game, an object you can lose. I’ve not seen another game that’s owned up to it to this degree. And this faithfulness to ludo-narrative cohesion fixes Trad play. The GM can construct an environment with all the mechanical bits and bobs, complete with all the layout tricks he likes. He then drops the players into this environment and sits back. And waits. The greatest strength of a Trad game (letting the GM just go nuts in the background) then overcomes Trad’s greatest flaw (the ease of railroading). 

“But the game’s lacking in combat balance!” This freaking Dark Souls, why’re you looking for a fair fight??? That's not a thing in Dark Souls and we all know it!

“The game has glaring flaws!” Yes it does, but you know what you do with that? What you literally do with all Trad games: houserule it extensively. Just 'cause 5e is more polished than Dark Souls does not mean that 5e is a good game, nevermind that they expect you to fix their design stupidity. There’s no real operative difference, like it or not. I’d much rather house-rule a game with a good chassis (Dark Souls) than a mediocre one (5e, and I’m being generous by calling it mediocre). And the set up of Dark Souls is actually really really good. 

You can find all the obvious flaws and discuss the really bad production cycle of The Dark Souls RPG all you like. It’s deserved. The game was clearly rushed. But if you’re going to do that the other side of it should be discussed as well. The Dark Souls RPG respects the actual gameplay ideas of the video game, and adapts it to TTRPGs more faithfully than any other adaptation than I’m aware of. That makes the flaws of this game all the more tragic.

That being said, I’m going to enjoy drawing up dark and twisted environments with all the crunchy/fictional goodness I can. Not to mention hacking part my players’ backstories with glee when they die.

If you don’t then that’s your choice. But me? I’m gonna go have some fun.

Sometimes I am really glad I write these awhile in advance. My opinion's become a bit more sarcastic since the above, so in my typical fashion I'm not going to rewrite the above (because it's not wrong) but contextualize it. See, I really like this idea of the special abilities being tied to stuff you find in the world, and that you change your character build by swapping out the items you have, with some influence and choice within the class you have. Combine that with a good and crunchy combat system and something passible at skills and you'd have a good game!

That seems.... familiar... somehow... where have I seen this before?

Yes, Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, the Essentials line. The classes have more choice than Dark Souls, nevermind the feat choices are voluminous. 4e's got multiple books worth of items, along with a way of fixing the math so that you don't need the items to keep up. Monsters are built off of 4e's far better engine, with plenty of room to not just do what Dark Souls currently does.... but a lot better. Like, a hell of a lot better.

THAT, my friends, is about 80 bucks: the cost of the Dark Souls roleplaying game, shipping included! If you can throw in some extra money for a copy of DM's Guide 2 you'll be set for the rest of your life.  You can take the same ludo-narrative stuff that Dark Souls does and put it in here, with more variety, better builds, and actual guidance for hacking the game.

Sure, the art ain't as nice. And the writing in Dark Souls I find more enjoyable. But those above books? They'll give you the same experience, but more reliably.

So yes, Dark Souls is actually a good RPG

But 4e is better, buck for buck.

But that's true of 4e against a lot of modern games, Essentials or not.

Wandering is the Point

I'm Ornery

I do not like most video games. They feel too sculpted, too clean, too sterile. Having grown up in controlled and sterilized environments I find myself practically allergic to anyone controlling my environment, nevermind me. This makes communicating any part of my worldview particularly difficult, nevermind sitting down to play some other numbskull's idea of fun. So I am phenomenally picky about video games. They either need to be areas where I can just run around or they need to be sculpted so freaking well that I can just enjoy it, as opposed to realize I've been taken for yet another ride.

And I hate that feeling, on a genetic level.

It's practically enough for me to break out in hives.

No, I don't think it's inherently a problem. Well, the hives part, probably yes. But my dislike of being in a sterile and controlled environment is not a problem, thank you very much.

Which brings us to Dark Souls and the secret area Ash Lake.

Dark Souls is Ornery Too

I have noticed something about "classics", actual classics: I usually have to take a long time to absorb them. It took me five attempts to read Brothers Karamazov, over the course of almost ten years. Les Miserables still sits on my shelf, incomplete. The Solar Cycle was shotgunned through rapidly, which I've been told is not the best way to go about it, but I knew that if I didn't just sit down and do it I'd never get it done. And yeah, that was phenomenally difficult to do, but I did it. It always feels like this wrestling of wills, as I try and get this new viewpoint into my skull and try and figure out what I think of it.

Dark Souls and I seem to have a similar relationship. I'm on year two and my second attempt. It's going better, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that cussing the game out and walking away for weeks was a common occurrence. But I've continued on my way, killing everything in my way indiscriminately, hoping that my zweihander could keep the stunlock going, upping my endurance so that I can continue an onslaught of damage. It's probably not the best build but I love seeing creatures stunned or proned. 

I heard about Ash Lake thanks to my brother-in-law, Kyle. He told me how to get there: strike down not just one but two secret walls, and make your way down The Tree. When you get to the bottom you will be there, at Ash Lake. I had seen pictures of the trees. The dragon. And that path of white sand, cutting through the navy water. I dunno, I just wanted to go. Why not? It was really that simple of a desire. But the barriers to getting to the secret route was.... not what I wanted to do. Blight Town is an awful awful place. I want to get out of here before I even go; poison swamps with fire-bugs? Nope. Nope. Nope. So walking further into that mess? Definitely not, thanks.

Well the other day, while trying to pick a peck of snide, somehow I stumbled acrost that tree, with two false walls inside!

And I thought: why not?

Oh NO.

(For those you who are blessed in your ignorance, that's a basilisk. It has a poisonous breath that kills you and then cuts your health in half until you can get the curse removed)

Yup, got cursed, half health! Now I could either go back or keep trying to go down. I've already got to get all the way back up to the surface to undo the curse. And that means getting back through Blight Town. I mean, that's going to be one heck of a trek and I just... I mean I may as well get to the bottom, right? Basilisks are bad, but they aren't impossible to deal with.

OUCH

So I am totally not at the right level to take those guys. It takes way too many hits to kill these fungusmen things, and so one on one became... impractical. I wound up running through, after several dozens of attempts. I practically wept at getting to that bonfire. I'd finally made it down here! After so many attempts I-

OH COME ON DARK SOULS!

A freaking hydra! Really?? Well, maybe I can just go around and-

Why.

Just WHY

ANSWER ME

Unable to avoid the hydra and unwilling to run back up and brave that tree so soon, I decided to go after the hydra. I figured I either had to git gud or just start over by this point, I was so unwilling to beat a retreat. So I went back at it. I kept dying, but each time I learned a bit more. And a bit more.

And then a head flew off.

And then I had a blind spot in the attack pattern. 

I only died one more time before finally putting the hydra down. I'm still trying to figure out how the heck that happened.

There are a few other creatures hanging around, but it's just white sands, worn away by the black-blue water. All these trees.... and then I found a grove of these trees, rising up out of the water. With a dragon. He shouldn't be here! Dragons are dead in the setting! Like, wiped out. With the exception of the Gaping Dragon (which is certainly not in its original condition) dragons were wiped out by Gwyn and the gods. The dragon was also sitting in front of a bonfire that had been boosted, which means that the dragon is female, given she is the flame-keeper. The idea of picking a fight with this young dragon seemed idiotic. I was cursed and was certain that I did not want to pick a fight at that point, not one I didn't have to. 

Wait, I can enter a covenant with the last true dragon?

Absolutely yes.

Now it was time to go back up; there literally wasn't anything around else here, beyond some weird clam monsters and a few items. Going back up wasn't quite the struggle I thought it would be. I've always found myself overestimating the difficulty of trekking back through an area; I got up pretty easily.

Now to take care of that freaking curse. I found the lady who sells them, and realized I had some farming to do. Not a problem!  I went killed a bunch of undead, over and over and over, until I thought I had enough. So I went back.

I had read it wrong. I needed another thousand. Groaning, I killed the thousand souls I needed and came back.

Now, I'm not entirely sure why, but that actually meant a decent amount to me. That messy little episode in my extended Dark Souls run is something I'm still pondering, days later, trying to understand what had happened. I'm not sure why that is. But it is. If I could find more video games that did that I'd play a heck of a lot more often. 

Whatever that is.

"Games Need to be Accesible"

(Or "sOmE GaMeS ShOuLd bE AcCeSiBlE bUt ThEy DoN't AlL hAvE tO bE, as Aaronsolon said)

So I'm walking into my workplace one day, minding my own business, when a coworker of mine runs up to me and strikes up a conversation. I'd talked with this guy a few times before, but had never talked in-depth with him. As we were going along I randomly decided to tell him about the board game night I and a buddy of mine host on Friday nights, after the kids and spouses are asleep. He was thrilled, but kinda blanked when I told him we would be playing Power Rangers. He told me that Thuy Trang was his eternal love and he would be there. Two other people had RSVP'ed and I was excited! Four people playing Power Rangers meant that we would be past the dreaded three player mark, where the game is probably at its hardest. People were claiming colors and it was gonna be a great  evening.

Yeah, no one else showed up but this guy. Oh, and he was new to anything beyond Monopoly.

I smelled disaster.

Part of the challenge of Heroes of the Grid is that it's a very intense game. You have to really know the character you're playing and have to be talking to everyone else constantly, otherwise the influx of attacks flattens the group. With a system as uncompromising as this game's I was afraid that I would not be able to help my newfound friend figure out the character in time. I was right. We got completely and utterly stomped, losing three times over, but choosing to complete the game anyway. We narrowly beat Scorpina, almost losing for a fourth time in a row. And it was great!... at least for me. We were both emotionally exhausted from the ordeal and it was past midnight. I kinda figured this would the last time I'd see this dude, honestly. Two people had bailed on that night and he was given a game that was completely and utterly overwhelming with few people to rely upon and, especially after the ass-kicking we had been subjected to, I wouldn't blame him if he didn't come back. I was also a little bitter that the game was this friggin' hard.

"So this was great! Let's have more people next time, yeah?"

We had a conversation about the game, and he was practically bubbling about it. Yeah, his luck had been horrible and the game was a bit overwhelming, but it had been such an adrenaline rush! We both wanted to play again, but again, past midnight and all that. I told him about some of the other experiences I'd had and he listened attentively. He said he wanted to get better, so he could have more fun with the game. I told him he would, if he put the time in. He nodded, said he'd be there next week, and left.

I stared, sorta slack-jawed, as he walked back to his car.

And, in case you think that was a fluke, I had called one of my buddies who had first played this game with me and asked how much he wanted to keep playing, since I wanted to buy expansions for the game and didn't want to waste my money on it if he wasn't going to play. Our first games had been very rough, with the first one ending in abject defeat and the second one sorta being cheated through. So I was pretty nervous. I had enjoyed the game, but I really enjoyed the challenge. I do not assume others have such a thrill at finding a game that takes some work to understand. But his answer surprised me. "Yeah, it felt like whenever I first played Pandemic, that same 'HOW ARE WE GOING TO BEAT THIS??'  was there. But that turned out alright and it's one of my favorite games now, so I figure why not keep cracking at this one? It's a lot of fun, even though we lost!"

The thing is, I don't mind easy games. One of my favorites, Tsuro, is extremely easy and simple. Anyone can play it, at any confidence level. I've never seen someone not be able to play Tsuro, and it's so aesthetically pleasing to lay down those gorgeous to lay down those tiles and laugh as you realize that everyone is screwed and that's OK. And I'll be damned if Smash Bros isn't an immensely fun game to play with people who have no idea what they're doing! It's got a pretty low threshhold of initial play. I certainly think there should be be gateway games for every genre of play imaginable. People need to know that these can be fun and achievable, in that order.

But I also think that some games should not be. The challenge is part of the point of that game, that adrenaline rush as you realize that, while you may not understand the rule-set, it is open to you and it is on you to understand and master and, should you fail, the system punishes you, sometimes severely. The experience is fraught with the danger of being sent all the way back to the beginning, sometimes with nothing to show for your trouble. And these types of games are extremely frustrating at times, especially for the people who love them. A good game that is difficult does not fail you because it failed, but because you failed. And that distinction has to be very, very, very apparent when playing the game. I haven't beaten Ornstein and Smough yet because Ornstein and Smough are intrinsically unfair, I keep losing to Ornstein and Smough because I'm not respecting the rules that the game has bound the world to. I don't dodge enough, I get very greedy for just that one extra hit that won't actually do anything but HE'S OPEN AND I SHOULD TAKE IT AND OH MY GOD IF I DON'T DO IT I'LL DIE. Such a panic mode is a trap, and these games are designed to punish panic. Do not panic. Think. Breathe. Be judicious. If you lose, you know why you did. If you won, you definitely know why you did. You earned it! You faced something that looked insurmountable and almost was, but you did it! The adrenaline high is unlike anything else, to know that, even if others did it or not, you did. Life is different after a victory like that.

There are some, however, who cannot partake in that experience. Whether it be an actual handicap, money, whatever it is, they cannot keep up, and feel bad that they can't. It doesn't help that the people who can weather such experiences rub it in their faces, which is all sorts of wrong, but even if they didn't there'd probably be some people who wanted to experience a different aspect about the game than the difficulty of it. Perhaps the story is something you want to experience, or maybe the aesthetic really appeals to you, or maybe you just want the damned designer to give you a break. And there are games that do this! And I have no issue with that! The designer, the one sending the message, thinks it should be more open. I'm perfectly fine with that.

But some don't, and that's fine too. Games are a communication of an interactive nature. The designer sets up a design and the player goes through it, guided by the rules into an experience that the designer intended. Some designers are a bit more specific about what they intend. They have forged an aesthetic, a set of mechanics, an experience, a message that is inseparable from the difficulty of the game itself. And yes, the designer gets to be the one who makes that decision. Yes, it excludes some people from playing. I doubt I'll ever finish Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. I'm just not very good at platformers. It's not something I really grew up with, and therefore a game that other platforming gamers have told me is hard is something that I'm not going to have the best experience with. And that's alright by me. The world is not about me, and I have no issue with someone telling me "No, this is not for you", because there are plenty of other things that are. In fact I have issue with games that say "this is for everyone!" because it means that they're precisely for nobody at all. I am quite sure that I will some day meet someone who hates Tsuro, although I've no idea if that person will have a true pulse or a soul. I may have to call for an exorcist at that point, but such is life. But Tsuro is also designed for a specific experience: an intro party game. It's not deep, and anyone trying to get real depth of gameplay out of base Tsuro is going to have a really bad time with it. But fortunately Tsuro's design is extremely clear and I don't know of a soul that has ever mistook it for a tactically deep game.

No game (or media) is for everyone, all the time, or sometimes ever. Not everyone can read Dostoevsky. Not everyone can read Gene Wolfe, or Tolkien. I don't think people should be machismo about it (although sometimes a good victory roar and chest pounding feels pretty dang good, particularly Dostoevsky), but let's not beat about the bush here: if you are not talented in the way that a game (or media) demands the designer has absolutely no obligation to make it so. In fact, he has a responsibility to make sure it hits a certain audience, and only them. Communication is, by nature, exclusive. I'm not going to deliberately (yes, that's in there on purpose... sigh....) tell someone else other than my wife and children that I love them with every fiber of my being. I am not going to call my best friends "Beppin", cause that's what I call my wife, nor would I say "DA BUB" to anyone but my firstborn son, because those things are meant to for them, and them alone. Is it elitist? Abso-friggin'-lutely it is, it's only for them and I mean to keep it that way! Are they good enough for me, which insinuates that others are not? Yes! Should I be a jerk about it? No! Just because I love my sons enough to talk absolute nonsense to them with a big grin on my face, in a way that only they understand, should not mean I should share that experience with my brother-in-law.... although I think he'd find that awesome.

I'll have to process that later.

Anyway. 

So, I don't think that games are for everyone, everywhere, at all times. No one is that good at designing. I think you can either say "my game is for everyone" and be lying, however unintentionally, or you can say "No, I've designed for this experience" and, if you don't want to compromise that experience or make a similar experience, there's absolutely no issue with it. Should people be jerks about having that particular talent? No. But those people shouldn't be penalized by not having a game built for that particular experience. They should not have that particular talent excluded from a gameplay experience. Excluding people from your game is an inevitability. The question becomes who do you want to talk to, and why?

And I think that's a lot more interesting than saying "This game is too hard and I think it should be made to fit me". If it's too hard for you, then look elsewhere. I know I have and I'm glad I did. But, sometimes, just sometimes, try it again. And again. And again. And again. You might get something you didn't expect to.

BUT HEAVEN HELP ME IF WE DON'T WIN NEXT TIME

EDIT: I changed a few things meant in good humor that, as it turns out, were not taken that way. There will be a further edit later, but I cannot do that at the moment, so I hope this very short  apology will have to do before I put in a longer one in later. My apologies are offered. It's the internet, so I don't assume forgiveness, but that out of my control.