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Post by doc on Dec 24, 2007 16:24:31 GMT -6
I will be running a Spawn of Fashan game for my group the day after Christmas (my first time running it, having played it once or twice many years ago). After I actually run the game I will be posting a review here. Just thought I'd warn you now  Doc |
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Post by coffee on Dec 25, 2007 2:10:26 GMT -6
Maybe I'm thinking of another title, but wasn't that one a parody of an RPG?
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Post by calithena on Dec 25, 2007 9:27:43 GMT -6
No, not a parody.
Doc, do you have an original, or one of the re-releases from a few years back? Both are extremely rare collector's items, needless to say, thanks to Law Schick's review back in the day.
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Post by doc on Dec 25, 2007 13:25:26 GMT -6
There is nothing on it that indicates that it is a reprint; it is dated 1981 and on the cover says it is a special "Denvention" copy. It seems to be an original in all of it's garish goodness  It is indeed a real game and not a parody. It was a game written by a 20 year old gamer named Kirby Davis who had geeked out on D&D and decided to write a game to take it to the next level. Unfortunately, while he had the enthusiasm, he just didn't have the writing or organizational skill to pull it off. It was so poorly written that some reviewers were certain that it couldn't be for real. Ironically enough, Kirby Davis is now an editor at a Pulitzer prize winning newspaper. Doc |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 1, 2008 19:21:08 GMT -6
Doc, I thought that Spawn of Fashan was an obscure enough game that I wanted to combine the two threads. Hope that's okay.
- Fin.
As a holiday novelty, I ran a game of Spawn of Fashan today.
Oh. My. God.
For the uninitiated, Spawn of Fashan (SoF) was a self-published game written by college student Kirby Davis in 1980 and brought to the 1981 Denver Convention for sale. The game ended up selling all of twelve copies with a handful more going to gaming magazines for review. Said reviews were not kind. The game was criticized for it’s needless complexity, lack of editing, plethora of charts, seemingly senseless rules, and general incoherence as a game. Many reviewers were certain that SoF was intended as a parody of role playing games, and for some twenty five years it was regarded in the hobby as the worst RPG of all time.
Well, apparently there has been some interest in SoF in recent years, with Kirby Davis producing a very limited edition of his game to sell to eager curiosity seekers who wanted to read “the world’s worst RPG.” I was able to get my hands on a copy of the game a while back and planned to run it as part of my monthly “retro night.” Unfortunately the writing was so thick that I was not able to get through it in time for retro night and instead decided to save it for an end of the year treat. Ladies and gentlemen, strap yourselves in and take small children firmly by the hand, as I am about to impart upon you Doc’s official review of the infamous Spawn of Fashan!
Let me preface this review by saying that Spawn of Fashan is NOT the worst RPG that I’ve ever seen. That honor would have to go to World of Synnibar, a game so totally worthless that I had to remove it from my game shelf for fear that it would taint my other RPGs. Let’s just say that holy water was involved.
That being said, SoF is a handy guidebook of how NOT to write a game. Which is to say that the game itself isn’t horrible, but it is obfuscated beneath so much poor writing and pointless rules that it makes it nearly impossible to find what is worthy within the game itself. Trying to comprehend the game from only one or two readings is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree or attempting to give a cat a bath. It is as if Davis poured a bunch of words into a cup and then flung it at a blank page without interest in what order the words ended up in. I consider myself to be a bright guy, but there were times while reading this that I could actually feel IQ points slipping away. To further exacerbate matters, the game has very few examples of it’s concepts in play and there is almost no artwork. The entire book is written with two columns to a page and it is very difficult to discern where one topic or chapter ands and another begins. Throughout the game different terms seem to be used interchangeably with each other and are given different rules seemingly every few pages. There are tons of charts of the sort that would be familiar to anybody who ever slung dice from the early 70’s to early 80’s, but the rules for using the charts are often convoluted and contradictory. I can honestly say that SoF is one game where the charts make a lot more sense to you if you DON’T read the accompanying rules.
Creating a character was relatively simple compared to what I’d been warned about. It starts with the interesting idea that you roll what occupations your parents had, then choose an occupation that interested you in childhood. You can only play a human in SoF, although a note from the author stated that in future supplements it would have been possible to play non-human races as well. You then roll up your stats and, based on your strengths and weaknesses, enter either into one of your parents professions, or the one that you wanted to since you were young. While this might be anathema to gamers used to D&D 3.5 who are used to picking a class and then playing around with the stats to get them to suit their purpose, I found this to be a neat lil’ role-playing hook. Think about playing a frail occultist who deeply wanted to be a hardened warrior but didn’t grow up with the physical attributes to pull it off. Think about all the good role-playing possibilities stemming from how he would react to fighting types. Awe? Jealousy? Downright anger? I kind of like it. Once you get your stats and occupation (which includes mundane occupations like laborer, trader, barber and farmer as well as the more adventurous types as mercenary, thief, and occultist) you get to roll extra dice to add to your occupations more important stats. From there you figure out your bonuses and penalties. A neat part of the game is that not all occupations get the same bonuses and penalties for the same stat. Which is to say, a mercenary and occultist may both have a dexterity of 17, but the mercenary would get a higher Armor bonus than the occultist because the mercenary would have been trained in how to move around in combat to avoid being hit. Certain occupations (trappers, thieves, and occultists amongst others) gain a stat called “senses” that allows them to get a feel for the world around them, avoid surprise, and pick up on things that might not be readily apparent. Also, there are some classes that rely almost entirely on knowledge, such as a Teacher that has a decent chance of having some useful information about almost any subject, and an Expert who has only a single area of specialty, but is a qualified master in his field who knows intimately every aspect of his field of knowledge. Depending on what sort of field the player wants the character to be an Expert in, the party could end up with a non-combat, non-spell casting character who is the most useful and important member of the group. A wonderful change from what we usually see in games today. Following this, each character rolls a number of dice to see if there is anything unusual about any of his senses. There is roughly a 25% chance that he has a specific bonus or penalty in any sense. Some examples include a character being color blind, having eyesight so acute that he gets a large bonus to hit with a bow, having sinus problems that interfere with his ability to smell anything, being able to sense when invisible creatures are around him, being able to detect the faint taste of poison in a meal, etc. Then, depending on your intelligence score, you decide on how many languages you know, which can include beast tongues, monster speech, or the strange tongues of creatures alien to the world. From there you get to roll to see if there is anything superior or inferior about your body, whether or not you have a mental illness (three different charts worth), and finally to see if he has any special learned ability such as being an Expert Outdoorsman, Animal Charmer, Very Sneaky, or an Expert Swordsman (which entitles him to more attacks per round). As you can see, it is indeed VERY chart and table heavy, although most need be rolled upon only at character creation. When you are finished, you actually have a character with plenty of role-playing hooks that is sure to be different from any other character in the party. It reminds me somewhat of the character creation rules from the old Arduin Grimoire, though nowhere near as smooth or offbeat.
I have only a few complaints about the character creation system. The first is that female characters must start with only 50% of the strength, constitution, and hit points of their male counterparts. This strikes me as strongly and uncomfortably sexist, even considering the time that it was written. I’m guessing that there are no female warriors on the world of Fashan. Also, there are too many saving rolls and the rules for them tend to be very nebulous. In truth they can all be condensed into two rolls, one for insight and awareness, and one for willpower and tenacity. Also, the rules for the sole arcane class, the occultist, seem to indicate that there is no set number of times per day that he can attempt to use his abilities. Which is to say, he can theoretically use his powers all day if he wants to. While this may be completely intentional, it seems kind of out of whack. But maybe I’ve just been adhering to the modern gaming myth that all characters have to be equal in order for the game to be fun.
While character creation is (relatively) straightforward, combat is a mess of both good and bad ideas thrown together in a manner so chaotic and confusing that would make even the Rolemaster crew tear their hair out. To begin with, the rules for determining initiative take up two pages in the book that essentially boil down to “roll 2d6 and add your character level.” Not a bad idea at all, as more experienced characters get to have the edge over neophytes in predicting a fight. The problem comes when you add into the equation that some characters have the Senses stat, which means that they can get a feel for what is coming no matter what their level, and that they can hide their mental signature to keep others from detecting that they are in the area. I think. Two simple ideas that I actually like about combat are that the character’s Intelligence stat actually has a large say in how well they can hit in combat, which is very different from 99% of the other fantasy games that have been written where the hulking, undisciplined brute with the mind of a bar of soap can supposedly walk right through the slim but highly intelligent fencer who has studied seven different fighting systems. Also, rather than have high strength simply give a static bonus to damage, each weapon has a minimum strength score to use it. If the character’s strength is five points above the score, he does 1 ½ base damage. If his strength is ten points greater he does double damage. If fifteen points higher, 2 ½ times damage, etc. Simple and useful.
If only it remained that simple.
Every character has an AMC, which is their armor class. It starts at 10 and then goes lower depending on what sort of armor they are wearing and how agile they are. A character rolls a d20 and adds up his bonuses to see if he hits. Still pretty elementary. But then the opponent gets to parry or dodge the blow, which, enigmatically, is done not on a d20 scale but on a percentile scale based on twice their reflex score plus their intelligence bonus (again I think), plus any weapon parry bonus. THEN, if the parry is not successful, the attacker has to roll ANOTHER “to hit” consisting of a percentile roll vs. the strength of the defender’s armor. So if a defender is struck in an armored area, no matter how high the attack roll, there is a high percentage that he’ll end up not taking any damage whatsoever. Also, they have shields listed in the book, but they grant no parry or armor bonus that I can see. Instead, shields are given hit points. From how they present it, it seems that every character who has a shield in combat automatically takes every hit on his (again, no female warriors in Fashan, even though on page 2 the author states that the game is in no way sexist) shield until it shatters to pieces, and only THEN runs the risk of taking personal damage. Again, they do not make this point clear at all, so I am only using common sense based on what I was looking at. Then there is the Serious Injury Tolerance Level, a number that each player has that reflects his ability to not wuss out in combat. If a character receives a wound that is greater than his SITL, he needs to make a save roll or suffer a serious wound like having a limb mangled or having the attacker’s weapon get stuck in his body. The problem is that is takes very little damage to surpass a SITL number and most weapons will end up doing bizarrely lethal attacks more than 50% of the time. But that’s okay, because if you take all your damage you get to roll vs. your Cling to Life saving roll every round until you get help or perish. Just make sure that you have read all of the sections telling you which of the myriad modifiers relate to your character and the type of damage he took. On top of all of this, each player has to keep track of his character’s Fatigue. Which is to say, you gain Fatigue if you run too often, don’t eat enough, don’t get appropriate sleep, use your stats too much, use your skills too much, or swing your weapons in a combat more times than your Fatigue Number (based on Constitution) allows. The more fatigue you accumulate, the less you will be able to succeed at and the more your stats will begin to suffer. It is D&D for accountants; rather like Powers & Perils.
The rest of the game is also a smattering of good and bad. As characters gain levels, they gain percentile chances to increase their stats (which in turn increases their skill bases). As with character creation, different occupations will have differing percent chances to increase particular stats. On a successful increase, the stat is bumped up by 1d6. It reminds me a bit of Tunnels & Trolls in the way that a high level character might start to look like he should be wearing tights and a cape and flying through the air. The experience system works, though, and makes it very clear what sort of advantages characters can expect as they level. Unfortunately, there is no hit point chart anywhere that I can see. Each occupation is given a number of dice to roll and add to gain beginning hit points, but from what I can tell by reading the book, hit points seem to remain static and not go up. It’s an interesting take, as any additional hit points would have to come from raising your constitution, but I can’t shake the feeling that I am missing something here.
The beast and monster section is ridiculously sparse, There are a total of seven, and most are of the “oh, come ON” variety. The neatest one is the Finikor, a cross between a giant lion and a hydra with heads that include eagle, serpent, lion, bear, giant tick, and piranha. Of course it is the most dangerous of the seven, but at least it will definitely get a reaction from the players.
The setting of the game is never actually described in any detail, but much can be inferred from the snippits of info based on the author’s game that can be found here and there throughout the text. The general gist is that the game is set in the World of Fashan. To be specific, during the time of the “Fourth Book of Fashan.” (Don’t ask, ‘cause I don’t know.) It takes place some thousand years after a great apocalypse that shook the world and caused all civilization to begin anew. Humanity resides in great city-states, four of which are shown on the map, and all have a healthy paranoia concerning their neighbors that helps keep the peace. Beyond the civilized lands, most of the continent seems to be made up of tropical rainforests, jungles, and savannas. And of course there are the Peaks of the Dragon, because every fantasy setting needs a mountain range. Despite each city-state having a council of rulers, the true power in the world comes from the Occultists, a vast semi-secret society of spell casters who have influence over the spirit world and are adept at using their craft to subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) influence the minds of men. The Occultists seem to be generally reviled, so must rule from the shadows and make it appear as if the city-state counselors hold the true power. Money is in the form of bank notes, which is a nice touch, but it is sometimes just too cool to toss a handful of coins at a greedy bartender or crowd of beggars, and bank notes just don’t have the same effect. Armor is light, likely because they are so near to the equator. Most folks won’t wear more than a chain mail shirt or metal breastplate, although shields seem to be pretty popular (Maybe because it seems to be pretty freaking impossible to get past a shield without tearing it to bits!). There are no standing armies of Fashan, as it is the natural inclination of people to distrust their fellows and not gather in groups of greater than thirty. This makes relations between political powers very interesting and complex, possibly allowing for some good role-play and storytelling. The author goes out of his way to describe Fashan as a place of savagery and violence where a city council might hire strong and brutal men to enforce their wills, but the names for the human-occupied areas include Biddles, Jugble, Biddelston, and Crumbudz, all located within the land of Boosboodle. The entire map is “Just South of Where Melvin is Standing Now.” Don’t ask me who Melvin is or what happens if he decides to move, because I couldn’t even begin to tell you.
My overall take is that SoF should be played much like the first edition of AD&D. Which is to say, take anything that is too cumbersome and ignore it, much like almost all of us did with the weapon speed and encumbrance charts (amongst others) Back in the Day, and keep the parts that make you want to actually play the game. If I were to run this as a regular campaign, I would streamline the saving rolls (see above), fatigue rules, and combat (Is there really a need for armor class AND armor penetration?). I would also make the rules for occultist powers, Senses and hit points a bit more distinct. I MIGHT limit the amount of tables to be rolled during character creation, though I have to say that they were quite fun and created some really unique characters.
In the game that I ran, the players were hired through a series of intermediaries by the Elder Council (e.g., the Occultists) to track down and eliminate an occultist who had left the Brotherhood and gone rogue. Of course the occultist really wasn’t all that bad a guy; he just decided that the Elder Council really wasn’t doing that much of a bang-up job in secretly ruling the world and decided he could do better on his own, which led to some hurt feelings amongst his former buddies. The players of course were told that he was a dangerous outlaw with powers that might “put an end to glorious Fashan unless neutralized before he can ascend to his true potential!” The group then treks across the great savanna, battling poisonous dust vipers, a bearlike creature called a foklor (whatever), and their own mounting fatigue before being caught in a trap by the creepers (an order of assassins who can create clouds of darkness from their bodies) and delivered into the hands of the rogue occultist (was kinda tempted to name him “Melvin”). The occultist attempted to feed them to his pet finikor (whom the party immediately named “TiaCat”), only to have his plan thwarted when Mortimer, the Teacher of the party, ( a better title might be “sage” or “Wise Man”) recalled that the legend states that the finikor becomes confused when confronted by more people than it has heads. The hardened mercenary Valmont rushes in and, after a couple of tries, manages to lop off one of it’s heads without getting too dead, thus confusing the beast. The group makes it’s escape and returns under cover of night to confront the occultist and his minions that leads to a fight where the occultist’s great hall becomes filled with creeper darkness and smoke from an ill-fated strategy involving an open flame. In the chaos of the battle, with nearly everybody firing blind within the darkness and heat, it is the pig farmer Muck who gets off a lucky shot on the occultist, striking him with his mighty pig Irongrunt and punching through his SITL, dealing him a serious wound. As the occultist goes down, the party flees the now burning plantation estate like rats fleeing a sinking ship, staggering back to the city of Biddleston to try to find the bloke who hired them. And that’s where we left it.
So, in closing, I can only reiterate that SoF is rather a poorly written game than the true dog of an RPG that it often gets the blame for being. If played by a group of gamers who have enough confidence in their own abilities to throw out the clunky parts and make up some of the rules subsystems as they go along, it is certainly a playable system. It could, theoretically, legitimately be cleaned up and tightened and made into a coherent game. The irony is that if this happened, nobody would ever be interested in SoF again, as it’s subculture popularity is based entirely on it’s reputation as the worst RPG ever made. As a seriously thought out and presented fantasy game, it would be just one more small press item crushed into anonyminity by the lumbering giant that is D20.
Go figure.
Doc
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Post by Finarvyn on Jan 1, 2008 19:22:13 GMT -6
Also from Doc...
Nobody has ANY questions or comments about SoF? Wow. Has anybody else ever played it?
Doc
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