Review: Kids on Brooms (Chapter 4)
Jan. 30th, 2024 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithKids on Brooms: Core Rulebook - Hunters Entertainment
This is a collaborative role-playing game about portraying a student at a magical school, with a rules-light, narrative-first storytelling game.
Read my review of Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 5.
Playing the Game
The opening paragraph mentions "nine periods" per day rather than the three shown on the Class Schedule. Presumably that would be three periods in each of Morning, Afternoon, and Night which is a much heavier schedule.
Stat Checks & Lucky Breaks introduces the mechanics of mundane challenges. (Spell Checks on pages 52-57 cover magical challenges.) A Lucky Break means rolling the maximum on the die, which lets you roll again and add the new number for a higher total.
Do you love different polyhedral dice? You'll love this aspect of the game. Each stat has its own die (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) that you roll for stat checks, and these dice are assigned to stats as desired during character creation. So it's not like a game where you only use one or two shapes most of the time. Here you use all the dice for every character, and what you want to do determines which stat applies and thus which die to roll.
Choosing a Stat for the Check includes the reasoning process and examples of easy through difficult attempts.
Planned Actions and Snap Decisions distinguishes between these mechanics based on whether you can take your time or are working under pressure.
Narrating the Results explains how the player and/or game master describe what happens based on the result of the check.
Stat Checks and Fears provides the more detailed explanation of the mechanical effects of your character's Fear. Generally it means you can only make Snap Decisions, your friends can't help you in certain ways, and you may have a penalty on actions.
Spell Checks is a fantastically flexible mini-magic-system. You describe what you want to do. The GM calculates the difficulty based on four tables: Magnitude of Effect, Area of Effect, Duration of Effect, and Experience with the Spell. The GM must tell you the difficulty so you can decide whether or not to attempt the spell. Then you roll the relevant stat die plus a d4 Magic Die. If you hate black-box magic systems where you don't know what you're rolling against or what your chances are, this is ideal for you. The Guidelines for Success or Failure describe the kind of things that typically happen as a result.
This is another place where you really want to think about your preferred game style. The furnished scale goes from easy success to magical disasters. You might want a spectacular success option (for a highly heroic game) and/or you might not want as much disaster (for a less violent, more social game or if your faculty is competent) as offered here.
Casting Magic on Another Living Creature is another case of the author telling the reader what kind of game to play. That directly contradicts the "collaborative world building game" approach of Chapter 2. Unprovoked casting on an unwilling recipient is called a crime. While this is true in some cultures, it is definitely not true in all, and such workings are the norm in some others. For a local-Earth example, contrast the ethics of Wicca ("An it harm none, do as thou wilt") vs. Asatru ("Have the fierceness of a wolf in defending yourself and yours") vs. Voudoun ("The deck is stacked against you; mojo helps you survive that.") and their interpretation of working magic on or for other people. However, that kind of hands-off approach does reflect the nature of magic in some worlds where it's very hard to affect others unless they're willing due to such things as natural defenses or divine will. It also matches the previous rule against magically manipulating the mind or emotions of another, if that's one you choose to use. But again, it's a major limiting factor that works fine in a game with low or no violence but can quickly get characters killed in a more dangerous context.
The truly high-handed rule is where killing another character, other than self-defense, turns the player character into a nonplayer character. This will piss off most players. It also has an unfortunate tendency to make people hesitate, which can get characters killed, and it's crippling in a high-danger game. Do you really want to look over your shoulder all the time worrying about consequences? Most people don't find that fun. If your gamers don't balk at this, and you're running a low-violence, low-risk game (or a pickup / demo where you don't want to deal with characters hexing each other's heads off) then this rule may work fine because players will avoid it. But it plays very badly in a high-violence, high-risk game especially considering the amount of time required to make a character and connect it with other characters. Gamers generally get bitchy at having control taken away from them, even if it's an advance "you can't do that or else" rather than after the fact. Gaming is about free choice.
However, these aren't baked into the mechanics all over; they're mostly individual rules that you can just ignore if they don't fit the kind of game you want to play. Simply discuss game style in the world building phase and tailor the rules to suit the group's taste.
Combat covers physical damage, magic, injuries and death. Physical damage states that there are no safe fights in this game -- no called shots or blunted impact, etc. This directly clashes with previous parameters that do aim toward a safe game by banning or punishing multiple fields of character actions as too violent or unethical. Every fight could be fatal; you could lose a character to one bad die roll. This is not most people's idea of fun.
Fortunately it's easy to fix. 1) Just say anyone can nerf their attack to half damage, or roll to subdue instead of injure. Same mechanics, less bloody outcome. 2) As mentioned previously, competent magical adults would ward the school at minimum, and more likely settlements in general, to protect against things like accidents and magical explosions. Thus you can set the level of possible injury wherever you like, from merely embarrassing to landing in the infirmary. 3) In a high-magic setting like a school, healing magic should be readily available, from characters carrying a magical first aid kit to places like the gym having stronger items stuck on the walls in case of emergency.
Combat Involving Magic offers some ideas for practicing it without risk of maiming or killing each other, but not necessarily to what I'd consider a competent level.
Injuries and death are greatly abstracted. This makes for a fast, simple conflict experience. However ... you're already expected to skim over the class time, and now you're largely skimming over combat too, even magical combat. Stop and think about what you really want to do in this game. If your gamers adore fighting, then you might want a more robust combat engine, even if not something as fiddly as many modern games have. An easy fix would just be to let people whack at each other for a few rounds instead of just one. If you don't adore fighting, and you're not spending much time on classes, then you'll have to figure out something else such as puzzles or treasure hunts or teen politicking to do with your time -- and this game is rules-light so it doesn't offer much framing.
Potions are largely abstracted. However, if you want more detail, just use the same tables for casting spells (Magnitude of Effect, Area of Effect, Duration of Effect, and Experience with the Spell) and maybe add one for ingredients (e.g. common, uncommon, scarce, rare, legendary). On the bright side, this is another highly flexible area where you can do almost anything you can imagine, with game master approval. So if you want to spend lots of time thinking up magical effects, hunting for rare ingredients, and/or doing stuff that other games won't let you do, then this is a great game for you.
Spending Money is almost entirely abstract. It merely distinguishes between Underclassmen (little or no money), Upperclassmen (a modest amount), and Faculty (a reasonable amount). The Wealthy Strength pushes funding up one level and for Faculty means they can buy pretty much whatever they want. Another pushy bit is that the game insists Underclassmen can't have jobs, which is ... very modern-American. Kids used to have paper routes, not to mention oddjobs like lawnmowing. Imagine what-all-else they're doing with magic. You can ignore that limitation if you think it would be fun to play conflicts between school, a job, and the monster of the week. Anyhow, if you hate games that involve a lot of accounting for cash, equipment, etc. then this three-level simplicity may appeal to you.
Playing Multiple Sessions just wraps up with a few reminders about plot, continuity, and character advancement.
This is a collaborative role-playing game about portraying a student at a magical school, with a rules-light, narrative-first storytelling game.
Read my review of Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3, Chapter 5.
Playing the Game
The opening paragraph mentions "nine periods" per day rather than the three shown on the Class Schedule. Presumably that would be three periods in each of Morning, Afternoon, and Night which is a much heavier schedule.
Stat Checks & Lucky Breaks introduces the mechanics of mundane challenges. (Spell Checks on pages 52-57 cover magical challenges.) A Lucky Break means rolling the maximum on the die, which lets you roll again and add the new number for a higher total.
Do you love different polyhedral dice? You'll love this aspect of the game. Each stat has its own die (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20) that you roll for stat checks, and these dice are assigned to stats as desired during character creation. So it's not like a game where you only use one or two shapes most of the time. Here you use all the dice for every character, and what you want to do determines which stat applies and thus which die to roll.
Choosing a Stat for the Check includes the reasoning process and examples of easy through difficult attempts.
Planned Actions and Snap Decisions distinguishes between these mechanics based on whether you can take your time or are working under pressure.
Narrating the Results explains how the player and/or game master describe what happens based on the result of the check.
Stat Checks and Fears provides the more detailed explanation of the mechanical effects of your character's Fear. Generally it means you can only make Snap Decisions, your friends can't help you in certain ways, and you may have a penalty on actions.
Spell Checks is a fantastically flexible mini-magic-system. You describe what you want to do. The GM calculates the difficulty based on four tables: Magnitude of Effect, Area of Effect, Duration of Effect, and Experience with the Spell. The GM must tell you the difficulty so you can decide whether or not to attempt the spell. Then you roll the relevant stat die plus a d4 Magic Die. If you hate black-box magic systems where you don't know what you're rolling against or what your chances are, this is ideal for you. The Guidelines for Success or Failure describe the kind of things that typically happen as a result.
This is another place where you really want to think about your preferred game style. The furnished scale goes from easy success to magical disasters. You might want a spectacular success option (for a highly heroic game) and/or you might not want as much disaster (for a less violent, more social game or if your faculty is competent) as offered here.
Casting Magic on Another Living Creature is another case of the author telling the reader what kind of game to play. That directly contradicts the "collaborative world building game" approach of Chapter 2. Unprovoked casting on an unwilling recipient is called a crime. While this is true in some cultures, it is definitely not true in all, and such workings are the norm in some others. For a local-Earth example, contrast the ethics of Wicca ("An it harm none, do as thou wilt") vs. Asatru ("Have the fierceness of a wolf in defending yourself and yours") vs. Voudoun ("The deck is stacked against you; mojo helps you survive that.") and their interpretation of working magic on or for other people. However, that kind of hands-off approach does reflect the nature of magic in some worlds where it's very hard to affect others unless they're willing due to such things as natural defenses or divine will. It also matches the previous rule against magically manipulating the mind or emotions of another, if that's one you choose to use. But again, it's a major limiting factor that works fine in a game with low or no violence but can quickly get characters killed in a more dangerous context.
The truly high-handed rule is where killing another character, other than self-defense, turns the player character into a nonplayer character. This will piss off most players. It also has an unfortunate tendency to make people hesitate, which can get characters killed, and it's crippling in a high-danger game. Do you really want to look over your shoulder all the time worrying about consequences? Most people don't find that fun. If your gamers don't balk at this, and you're running a low-violence, low-risk game (or a pickup / demo where you don't want to deal with characters hexing each other's heads off) then this rule may work fine because players will avoid it. But it plays very badly in a high-violence, high-risk game especially considering the amount of time required to make a character and connect it with other characters. Gamers generally get bitchy at having control taken away from them, even if it's an advance "you can't do that or else" rather than after the fact. Gaming is about free choice.
However, these aren't baked into the mechanics all over; they're mostly individual rules that you can just ignore if they don't fit the kind of game you want to play. Simply discuss game style in the world building phase and tailor the rules to suit the group's taste.
Combat covers physical damage, magic, injuries and death. Physical damage states that there are no safe fights in this game -- no called shots or blunted impact, etc. This directly clashes with previous parameters that do aim toward a safe game by banning or punishing multiple fields of character actions as too violent or unethical. Every fight could be fatal; you could lose a character to one bad die roll. This is not most people's idea of fun.
Fortunately it's easy to fix. 1) Just say anyone can nerf their attack to half damage, or roll to subdue instead of injure. Same mechanics, less bloody outcome. 2) As mentioned previously, competent magical adults would ward the school at minimum, and more likely settlements in general, to protect against things like accidents and magical explosions. Thus you can set the level of possible injury wherever you like, from merely embarrassing to landing in the infirmary. 3) In a high-magic setting like a school, healing magic should be readily available, from characters carrying a magical first aid kit to places like the gym having stronger items stuck on the walls in case of emergency.
Combat Involving Magic offers some ideas for practicing it without risk of maiming or killing each other, but not necessarily to what I'd consider a competent level.
Injuries and death are greatly abstracted. This makes for a fast, simple conflict experience. However ... you're already expected to skim over the class time, and now you're largely skimming over combat too, even magical combat. Stop and think about what you really want to do in this game. If your gamers adore fighting, then you might want a more robust combat engine, even if not something as fiddly as many modern games have. An easy fix would just be to let people whack at each other for a few rounds instead of just one. If you don't adore fighting, and you're not spending much time on classes, then you'll have to figure out something else such as puzzles or treasure hunts or teen politicking to do with your time -- and this game is rules-light so it doesn't offer much framing.
Potions are largely abstracted. However, if you want more detail, just use the same tables for casting spells (Magnitude of Effect, Area of Effect, Duration of Effect, and Experience with the Spell) and maybe add one for ingredients (e.g. common, uncommon, scarce, rare, legendary). On the bright side, this is another highly flexible area where you can do almost anything you can imagine, with game master approval. So if you want to spend lots of time thinking up magical effects, hunting for rare ingredients, and/or doing stuff that other games won't let you do, then this is a great game for you.
Spending Money is almost entirely abstract. It merely distinguishes between Underclassmen (little or no money), Upperclassmen (a modest amount), and Faculty (a reasonable amount). The Wealthy Strength pushes funding up one level and for Faculty means they can buy pretty much whatever they want. Another pushy bit is that the game insists Underclassmen can't have jobs, which is ... very modern-American. Kids used to have paper routes, not to mention oddjobs like lawnmowing. Imagine what-all-else they're doing with magic. You can ignore that limitation if you think it would be fun to play conflicts between school, a job, and the monster of the week. Anyhow, if you hate games that involve a lot of accounting for cash, equipment, etc. then this three-level simplicity may appeal to you.
Playing Multiple Sessions just wraps up with a few reminders about plot, continuity, and character advancement.
