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When I first discovered indie RPGs after many years thinking GURPS was the epitome of gaming, I thought simply opening up the GM role to the rest of the table, asking the other players "I don't know, what IS behind that door?", would make an awesome play experience. It didn't work very well! But with Itras By, I've finally found that experience: it's a game where volleying ideas back and forth between GM and character-players is fun, functional, and utterly central.
Itras By is founded on the principles of improv theater. "Don't block," that is, never stifle another player's fun by rejecting their ideas or refusing to participate in their stories. Instead, use what they give you, and build and add your own spin and suggestions. It brings about a delightful, smooth flow of play with a lot of kibbitzing and laughter.
The setting, an anything-is-possible surrealistic city where elements of weird urban fantasy (like China Miéville or Neil Gaiman), crime noir, and mythic fable blend, supports this freewheeling creative energy. No suggestion is totally implausible. And the minimalist mechanics, involving card draws that provide task-resolution with a jolt of improv inspiration ("Yes, you succeed, but a tiny detail goes wrong...") or inject surreal elements that take scenes in new directions ("play this scene on the B-side of Itras By, where everything is opposite"), work perfectly to keep things moving in new and exciting directions.
The editing is not perfect; you will need to inure yourself to strange turns of phrase and blatant typos, especially on the official cards. But these minor blemishes are not enough to take off the product's 5-star rating for me. This is rapidly becoming one of my all-time favorite games!
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A beautiful book, and a very dreamy setting as well. Get it, if only to impress fellow gamers with a charming alternative to more crunchy games. Itras By values the creative freedom of its players and shares many great hints for those interested to improve their repertoire.
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"Itras By" is evocative and surreal while still providing a framework to keep the group on the same page regarding the setting. An innovative idea in the game codifies the "make it your own" concept of setting design by assigning the group an exercise (one of four) to remove several paragraphs in the setting chapter from existence, as desired. Other exercises encouraging customizing the game via the addition of new pages and notes to the "official" setting material (and therefore canonizing it). **An aside - these exercises make explicit "rules" that should be implicit in all games, and the group may strike or add rules or setting equally.**
Game advice is provided for players new to the ideas of the early surrealism movement in art. Clear explanations and examples of how to make play surreal without making it meaningless and absurdist is provided.
The artwork and layout of the book is gorgeous and clean. Images bring the setting to life and also give examples of the dreamlike elements that appear in the game's setting. The layout and page elements have a feel of the 1920's art-books in which surrealism found its first home. Clear fonts without being drab and boring. Some pages might eat toner when printing, but the number of pages like this with game material is small.
The setting is creepy, majestic, and presents scenario ideas on each page. The rules are simple and clear, and focus on narrative control. Fans of "Over the Edge" will be impressed by this game, in both rules and setting. I highly recommend it.
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Itras by has the most unique setting I've encountered in RPGs. Not only is it a great game in itself, but there are lots of great advice for any RPG here. The layout and artwork is even better in this edition.
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This is a lightly-revised and reformatted version of the Free FATE rules by R Grant Erswell, which have been floating around for a few years — you can get the core at and the magic system supplement at .r />
The layout is improved over the originals (which were just vanilla Word documents with minimal formatting.) It's still pretty minimalist, but more readable and attractive, and they've added a TOC, index and character sheet. There's no artwork, but it's not really missed since this is a pure ruleset with no setting.
I haven't had a chance to compare the content, but for the most part it looks identical to the two original documents mixed together. Free FATE itself is a nice stripped-down version of the rules from Spirit Of The Century, sort of a reverse-engineered SRD of it. As such, it's well suited to pulp style games, as depicted in the running examples throughout the book. The magic system makes it more feasible to run fantasy, although it's probably still best suited to urban fantasy since there is no built-in support for the tropes of heroic fantasy or sword-and-sorcery (fantasy races, medieval weaponry, monsters, etc.) Of course there's nothing stopping you from making up your own.
At its current (introductory?) price-point of $0.00 this is a nice product, and I think Vagrant have done a good job of polishing the original work. I do have serious issues with the list price of $9.99 — that's a heck of a lot to charge for a digital-only book with minimal layout and no artwork, where they didn't even write the text themselves. Its starting to smell like exploitation, unless they're planning to give Mr. Erswell a fraction of the proceeds.
Personally, my recommendation is that this is a no-brainer as a free download, but when they raise the price you're better off downloading the original free document (see the links above) and making do with it until Evil Hat releases the long-promised FATE Core book in early 2013(?)
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Publisher Reply: |
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Thanks for the review, Jens! The crossed-out list price is there because of the print version (not available at the time of writing, but coming very soon). The PDF will always stay free, just like the german version at www.freefate.de. The reason we have published this book is mainly because we did a german version, by the way. We felt that we had to give the original a similar treatment, even if it was a couple years old already. |
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This is an excellent Comedy Game. I found it fun for both GM and PLAYERS. I suggest this game for anyone who wants a laugh.
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Gamemastering: Preparing and Running Storytelling and Roleplaying Games is a 162-page manual that addresses the subject in six sections: A Gamemaster's Tasks, The Role-Playing Group, Mastering a Gaming Session, Preparation, Adventure Themes, and Further Gaming Techniques.
The first thing I noticed about this book was the format – rather than looking like your typical RPG book, the use of color, graphics and subject icons on the cover and interior make this book look like it could easily share a shelf with “how-to” books such as the popular “X For Dummies” series. While it definitely gives the book a professional look, I can't really say if this would lend any appeal to the target audience, who can be notoriously fickle about such things, and easily turned off by such a mainstreaming of their hobby. I didn't encounter much of a problem with it during my own read-through.
The advice is solid and useful, and runs the spectrum from common-sense tips that only the beginners would find useful to common-sense tips that even the veterans never considered. Much of this advice can be found in other places, but the “For Dummies” style of the book invites a somewhat different approach to the material – for example, there are “Exercises,” or thought experiments at the end of sections to inspire the reader to consider how they would handle certain situations
The book outlines the tasks of the gamemaster and his relationship with the players, the different types of players (power gamers, storytellers, etc.), suggestions on dealing with problem players and resolving personality conflicts and conflicting player desires, as well as preparation and story structure. It is the latter two of these that I found the most useful, particularly the suggestions for using Mind Maps and Conflict Webs to structure and organize stories.
The book is wrapped up with an appendix that includes Georges Politi's list of 36 dramatic situations (with possible RPG applications added to each) and possible solutions to the exercises presented throughout the book.
Gamemastering is an excellent collection of GM advice compiled in a familiar format – but one that I hope won't turn too many gamemasters away, because the content is solid and very useful.
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This is a really well put together game with great production values. The rules are interesting, with everyone given the opportunity to guide the game and play a cool western character. All the classic tropes of westerns are here and there is an entertaining "bidding" mechanic that both feels right for the theme and makes the GM-less nature of the game very workable. Each game session is broken into a "Dawn, Day and Night" sequence that frames the story and helps to create scenarios that feel a bit like real stories. Very entertaining and a refreshing change from more "mainstream" RPG's.
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