NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR TABLETOP GAMING AT YOUR PUBLIC LIBRARY
NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR TABLETOP GAMING AT YOUR PUBLIC LIBRARY
By Adam Fisher
Diamond has a new partner in LionWing Publishing , a company dedicated to bringing tabletop games from Japan to the US . Several new titles including Convictor Drive : Armored by Grief and Picaresque Roman : A Requiem for Rogues will soon be gracing the shelves of your local gaming and / or bookstore . As I am an experienced GM and someone who has led various RPGs over the years , I got the privilege of running through the latter with my weekly gaming group to giving you not only an overview , but also ways you can integrate it into programming for your library system .
Picaresque Roman : A Requiem For Rogues is a roleplaying game ( RPG ) in which players take on the role of a picare , or a “ rogue among rogues .” These picares fall into one of five main gigs ( usually referred to as Classes in most RPGs ) consisting of Yakuza , Info Broker , Swindler , Heartbreaker , or Gambler , giving the player not only a focus for their roleplay , but various options for their character ’ s stats . Players must also select one of twenty-one side gigs , which adds to one of their stats and potentially influences their goals . The player uses the Core Rulebook to select these options , then sets up a character sheet with the following stats : Violence , Insight , Charm , Luck , and Capital . Using these scores and adopting personas , the players are guided through a scenario by a Game Master ( GM ) who sets up the Very Important Person / Place ( VIP ) and the goal . The players then perform actions against the GM and each other to obtain influence and power in the City .
Additionally , each player has a task to try to perform during the game . There are many of these to choose from such as : making the most Capital , obtaining the highest amount of the VIPs influence , or even starting the most fights with other players . One of the players has a unique task : that of a traitor — hired by the VIP to act against their fellow players , stealing back the hard earned influence points taken from the VIP . This is done with tact and strategy as the players are also trying to identify the traitor .
The game consists of two rounds . The players take turns doing various actions : taking influence from the VIP or each other , explaining a hustle they want to perform to make additional Capital , making or breaking a truce , etc . At the end of the players ’ turns , the GM gets to perform an event which can make things easier or harder for the players . Most of the actions throughout the game session are determined as a success or failure by opposed rolls of a d6 .
The first round ends when the VIP has lost all of their influence points . The second round consists of the players determining who they think the traitor was , and their reasonings for those accusations . The traitor reveals
themselves and then points are tallied , including points for correctly guessing the traitor ’ s identity , to determine a winner .
Like many RPGs , the GM has a lot of preparatory work when getting ready for a first playthrough . It took me about 10 hours to read through and understand the rules of the game when I prepared to lead my group . For a new game of which I had zero knowledge , this is not a long time commitment at all . The adventure my group went through was a customization of the first scenario in the Hard Times Scenario Booklet , which I was able to obtain from LionWing directly . “ All That Glitters ” had me , the GM , setting up a Casino Owner as the VIP . Another element of the game is “ The Joker ,” a person and / or item that the picares can gain as leverage over the VIP , and they were the Casino Owner ’ s daughter . Our 5 players were a Heartbreaker Politician , a Yakuza Escort , a Yakuza Investor , an Info Broker Procurer , and a Gambler MovieStar ; and they dived into the game wholeheartedly . The players were able to learn the mechanics and make characters in about an hour , and our full game session took about 4 hours overall .
While playing Picaresque Roman , our group had a fastpaced and fun time creating dialogue for their characters while completing the actions of the game . Knowing what I do now , next time I would give a basic set of rules to the players before coming to the game session so they could understand the actions as well as how to make a character . Relearning the actions they could do on their turns was a fair amount of our game time which could have been avoided by some form of an action overview guide or quick reference manual . My group
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