Review: Spirit of the Century

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Spirit of the Century (henceforth referred to as “SotC”) is a 1920′s pulp pick-up game written by  Robert Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Leonard Balsera and published by Evil Hat Productions. For me this is a difficult game to review because it has become my standard against which other games are measured. It would be unfair to review it without saying that since it was published I have become a huge FATE fan. I instinctively modify Spirit of the Century to produce the game I want for any particular campaign, tweaking for flavour or to produce various mechanical effects. Ideas presented in the rules which were truly revolutionary to me when I first read them have become somewhat common place and that initial feeling of wonder has dimmed. When I first discovered SotC I remember enthusing about it to friend – I still consider SotC one of the best games ever written, but I can now see the minor cracks where it’s not quite perfect and know how to work around them.

The Concept

SotC presents itself as a pulp pick-up game:

SotC is set in the 1920s (a little unusual – most Pulp games are set either in the 1890s or 1930s) and hits all the usual Pulp Tropes, offering a high octane rapid paced action romp reminiscent of stories featuring  Indiana Jones, the Shadow, Doc Savage, Alan Quatermas or the Rocketeer. Everything from monkey masterminds, through car and plane chases, pyramid traps to fight on top of moving zeppelins gets a look in. The game is highly narrative in flavour, allowing players to do pretty much anything they can imagine, whilst reinforcing character concepts mechanically. In play the system is fast and fun.

However I feel describing the game as pick-up is slightly misleading, and the issue comes down to the authors interpretation of the term pick-up. By a pick-up game, they mean a game that follows a specific mode of play that is well suited to running individual games with little planning or preparation. Each game session is a self-contained story, and the players and characters may change between stories with no real problems. Hence although SotC character generation is a lengthy process, once a set of characters have been generated you should be able to just pick those characters up and play at short notice with little prep, possibly when your regular game falls through. In this context it works well as a pick-up game, but if you view SotC as something you can buy and leap straight into play you’ll be somewhat disappointed.

The downsides – well there a are a few mechanical issues, which I’ll get to, but the biggest downside is the amount the game asks from the players. Many players don’t like narrative control and feel uncomfortable with it.

The Book

SotC is available in three forms – a hardback, a paperback and in electronic form as a pdf. There really isn’t that much difference between the hardback and the paperback. The biggest difference is the icon sized image on the spine. I own both and I can say the paperback will stand up to a battering – mine has made the trip from Europe to South East Asia in a backpack twice and is still in pretty good condition. The hardback by contrast has never been off the bookshelf. The cover image shows an ape in a biplane, a caped individual on the wing, a mechanic hanging under the wing, a jetpack pilot approaching, guns blazing, all played out in front a burning zeppelin backdrop.  Each of these characters turns out to be signature characters who appear throughout the book. The cover art whilst not brilliant does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the book.

All versions are approximately 6×9″ (about the size of an over-sized novel), 420 page, black and white. Interior art is variable in quality, but always fits the flavour of the text and usually features the signature characters. This format makes it perfect for carrying around, and would happily read this rulebook in places I would normally never consider bringing a roleplaying game (places like the London underground).

Layout throughout is excellent. In addition the actual text is awesome, well written, concise and clear. The tone is friendly, new concepts are carefully explained with examples, and often reinforced with quotes from popular media. In addition the entire text is incredibly well cross referenced. The order is logical, the book has a comprehensive table of content, and there is an 8 page index. My success with the index as been mixed though – often it has failed to find key rules for me. I found SotC unique when I first read through it – it is the only roleplaying rulebook I have found pleasurable to read from cover to cover and it never comes across as even remotely dry.

Breaking it down

The book opens with a single page introduction, explaining what the authors hoped to achieve and the concept behind their game. This is followed by a 7 page background which deals partially with their world setting (involving an organisation called the Century club), but is mainly a description of the pulp genre. The authors believe that Pulp runs on the principles of action, science and optimism – sounds about right to me. The game then introduces the basics of play. This chapter, only 8 pages in length, actually describes the entire game. It prepares the reader for more in depth discussions of each concept, but I find that these 8 pages are well worth printing out (from the pdf) for new players. The two concepts here that most new players find hardest to grasp are Aspects and fudge dice.

Because SotC uses FATE 3, which is in turn based on Fudge, the system uses Fudge dice (6 sided dice, with two sides marked plus, two sides marked with a minus, and two blank sides). They are designed to on average roll zero (the plus side counts as plus 1, the minus side as minus one, and the total results are summed.) The down sides to fudge dice are they may not agree with everyone, they can be hard to acquire, and they take a little getting used to. Personally I like them.

Following this introduction the rules dedicate 18 pages to Character Creation, 20 pages to Aspects (one of the most important concepts in FATE), 29 pages to system rules, 15 pages to gadgets and devices, 23 pages dedicated to the Century club setting, and 14 pages to a sample scenario. In addition the rules have a set of sample NPCs, some quick pick packages to make character generation easier, a bibliography and an index. However the most interesting thing about the layout is how the rule book handles skills. Skills are addressed three times: An overview with a description of the skill and common uses, a separate section of stunts (bought abilities akin to d20 feats) associated with the skills, and a GM perspective with rules for adjudicating on the skill. A couple of times key game mechanics are hidden away in this GM skills section – so for example the car chase rules are hidden in the GM section on the drive skill. This layout could have been a nightmare if not for the indexing and the cross referencing between the various sections.

The final section I have yet to mention is titled ‘Tips and Tricks’ and is a superb reference filled with great GMing tips. The theme for much of this advice is improvising games, giving scenes impact and getting your players involved. This section is worth the price of admission on its own, especially if you would like to run a low-prep game. Almost all the recommendations are system independent and would work for almost any game. I recommend that even if you choose not to play SotC, you give this section a read.

Aspects

Every character, object, location or even scene in SotC can have attributes called aspects. Aspects are short phrases which collectively paint a picture of who/what the character/place is, what they are connected to, what they are capable of and what’s important to them. Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptors, items or pretty much anything else that paints a picture.

• Example aspects for a character might include:  Lord of the Apes, “Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?”, Trusty Bullwhip,  Hooray Henry, Something to Prove, Leave No Man Behind, “Dr Livingstone I Presume” or Catlike curiosity
• Example aspects for a location might include:  ”Wretched hive of scum and villainy”, The edge of the Abyss, “Don’t look down”, Bricks and Mortar, or Dark as Midnight.

Aspects can be changed, and many aspects are considered temporary, so for example a character might acquire the temporary aspect of ‘Off Balance’, ‘Confused’ or ‘Drenched in fish oil’. A temporary aspect is an aspect which will either pass of its own accord, or can be easily removed.

Aspects are important because they allow game effects to be described in narrative terms, tying the game mechanics closely to the fiction of the story, but also because they allow the players to show what they would like to see in the story. If a player takes ‘Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?’ they are probably indicating that they would like to see snakes feature in the game. Similarly ‘Sucker for a pretty face’ probably indicates a player is interested in romantic entanglements, whilst ‘Death defying’ probably indicates they prefer to get straight to the action.

Character Generation

In most games character generation is something you endure in order to get to the game. In SotC character generation is a mini-game that can be great fun, and because its a group endeavour you could easily run it as a party game.

The first stage is solo –  Players select a name and brief background. For players stumped to come up with an idea a comprehensive list of pulp archetypes is presented including: Academic, Gentleman Criminal, Man of Mystery, Two-Fisted Pilot etc. Players then proceed through five phases of character generation. The first two are also solo, although input from other players is strongly encouraged. First, the player describes the characters origin and upbringing. In the second phase the player describes their actions during the great war.

Phases three through five are however definitely a group activity. Each player invents a novel their character stars in as part of phase three. During the Fourth and Fifth phase players get to ‘Guest Star’ in each others novels and add to the story. This normally results in brainstorming ideas along the lines of  ”Wouldn’t it be cool if your nemesis was the boyfriend who abandoned me in my story, and then I could meet him again when I guest star in your story.”

During each phase two character ‘Aspects’ are selected. Because these aspects are tied to the stories the group have come up with they actually mean something to the characters and the players. Also the party by this point have a huge network of ties tying them together. There is no question of why they work together – each of them will know at least two of the others (although I found it more common for a character to have ties to four or five other characters through the various guest star roles). As a result when they meet they are with old friends.

There are a couple of minor issues with the character generation:

• The first issue is that the final stage (selecting stunts), is a huge comedown after the fun of the story phases. If anything this just highlights how good the earlier phases are, because stunt selection is a fairly common character generation task and in any other system I wouldn’t have faulted it. It suffers in comparison with the rest of the SotC character rules because the rest of the rules are awesome whilst stunt selection is ordinary.
• The second issue is the difficulty of adding new characters after the initial character generation phase has been completed. SotC character generation really is a group activity. There are two ways around this – you can either perform a minor retcon and write the new character into existing stories as an also ran, or my preferred method, get the whole group together and create three entirely new stories in which the new character can star and two of the existing characters can guest star.

There is an alternative character creation method for getting things moving fast where you literally invent the character in play. I have never tested it and don’t know if it works.

The system

Skills in SotC are named and ranked from ‘Terrible’ through to ‘Legendary’. Each skill level has an associated bonus associated with it – so for example Poor is -1, Average +1 and Excellent +6.

To perform a task a player rolls 4 fudge dice and add the result to your skill level. His total is compared against another number (a difficulty or the total rolled by an opponent) to determine success. If your total for the skill roll is higher than the number required, the overflow or excess is called shifts and can be spent on special effects that enhance the quality of the action. There are specific rules for using shift in combat and in movement.

Remember that fudge dice average to zero, so a character with a Good (+3) skill will probably succeed at any task defined as good (+3) or easier, but more likely to fail than to succeed at any task greater than his skill level. This makes it very easy for GMs to set appropriate difficulty levels.

Aspects affect task resolution. Character (PC or NPC) can bring aspects into play to assist their tasks. This is called invoking if they are bringing their own aspect into play, or tagging if the aspect in question is on another character, and object or a scene. As an example a character might invoke his characters aspect of “Filled with Wrath” to assist him in an attempt to intimidate someone.

Alternatively an aspect can be brought into play in a negative way (known as a compel). The GM might compel a characters aspect of “Filled with Wrath” when someone attempts to taunt him.

Each player has a pool of FATE points which control how often he can invoke or tag aspects. A player spends a point to invoke or tag. The player receives a fate point whenever the GM successfully compels one of his aspects.

Mechanically invoking or tagging an aspect allows the player to add +2 to his roll, to reroll a result, or to take a small amount of narrative control and make a minor declaration.

When an aspect is compelled it usually limits a character’s available choices in a situation (or the player can convince the GM of the same). A player can compel his own actions by alerting the GM to the fact he is acting in line with his aspects. For example if a player had “Lord Byron, My one true foe” as an aspect, yet encountered Lord Byron at a party, the GM might compel the character. The character would have to react in a way appropriate to the aspect. This gains the player a fate point. The player may also decide to not accept the limitation on his actions, but must spend a fate point to do this.

Conflict and Consequences

SotC has a single conflict resolution for all forms of conflict. Physical conflict and social conflict are dealt with explicitly but it could equally well be applied to financial conflict, mental conflict or anything else where multiple characters are opposed over something. Having said this almost all the examples are of physical conflict and some of the subsystems (movement for example) might be hard to apply to other forms of conflict except in a very abstract way.

Each character has two stress tracks – a series of check boxes in a line for tracking how much trauma the character has suffered. The first is the Health stress track, used for physical stress such as wounds and fatigue. The second is the Composure stress track, representing the ability to “keep it together” in the face of social and mental injuries. These work very much like hit points except boxes on the track are marked off individually, so a hit doing 3 stress will mark off the third box on the track, but not affect the first two. If a box is already marked off the damage rolls up to the next unmarked box.

Players get a single action each round and success or failure is determined as per skill above.  If their action is a direct attack they inflict stress on the target target and the target marks off  the  appropriate box on his stress track. Any attack falling off the end of the stress track inflicts consequences which are temporary aspects.  A character can take three consequences, and then instead of taking a fourth consequence he is ‘taken out’.

If it’s not a direct attack  then the action is generally considered either an attempt to place a temporary aspect on something or someone, or an attempt to move in some way.

Consequences are divided into physical and composure. Physical consequences might include things like:  Out of breath, Torn ligament, Bruised, Broken ribs etc. whilst composure consequences might include things like startled, frightened, laughing stock, or bankrupt. Like any other aspects consequences can be invoked, tagged or compelled and are a potential source for fate point replenishment .

The setting

There really isn’t that much to say about the Spirit of the Century setting. It is clearly very generic, and very light to allow players to run any sort of Pulp game they want. Players are all born on the 1st day of the century and are part of something called ‘The Century Club’.  I believe the sole reason for this club to exist is as a plot device to get the characters together.

The setting section also includes a concise timeline of the early 20th century, details of the great war, and the league of nations. There is also a layman’s guide to the world in the early 1920s (with an emphasis on America), and a short section of the technology of the day (Air conditioning, Aspirin and Contact lenses are all common, the Brassiere is cutting edge technology, whilst the Aerosol spray wont be invented till 1926.)

Conclusions

Spirit of the Century is my ‘go to‘ game for a reason. When I first read this game it had me very excited. Fate points, aspects and the fudge resolution system produce an economy where characters experience a perfect balance of the good and the bad. Players actually want their character to encounter challenges and complications because these allow them to be awesome later. In addition this lets the game mirror the narrative conceit found in literature where by the characters have a hard time against their opponents yet somehow come out swinging at the end. In SotC each of those minor defeats was a chance to build up fate points. In addition the GM advice in the book is incredible and should be taken to heart by every GM.

There are some minor issues – the conflict system as written makes PCs too tough, and doesn’t bring consequences into play fast enough, also the way the stress tracks work can be confusing to those used to hit point based systems – a fix to both these issues is available on the publishers wiki under the title ‘Faster Conflicts‘. Also stunts can seem unnecessary – in fact I have played SotC without stunts and it plays like the same game. Almost any stunt effect can be achieved through the use of aspects and fate points. Using stunts or not is very much a personal choice. Finally the layout at times seems a little odd, especially the decision to divide skills into three separate sections.

However there is a lot to love about this game. I love the fact that it requires so little prep, that I can stat out a group of minions in under 20 seconds and produce a convincing fight, that the rules allow for almost any dramatic encounter and that what at first appears to be narrative fluff has a very real effect on the mechanics of the game. Most of all though I love the effect this game has on players. Sooner or later they stop thinking about the game in mechanical terms and start thinking in terms of what would be awesome.

Declan Feeney is a guest blogger on Gaming Brouhaha .