Fan Club “Blog” #6: Vaesen Review CONTROVERSY

Backed the Veasen Carpathia books and have got them. Honestly it looks like they took your advice to some part. The starter set comes with a book that includes what information on Veasen the players would know. The adventures in the Carpathia one as well destinates important clues would you need to make sure the players find.

Charlie Bamsey

What a Vae-sin.

AU

More piling on...I bought Vaesen and I'm reading now. Getting to the section on page 40 on two things that weren't mentioned: 1) The "Story Must Go On" only applies to failed rolls, so I think Quinn's criticism about the rolls not having the "You succeed...but" friction a lá Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark is still valid. Unmitigated success can be boring just like unmitigated failure. 2) In the following pages dealing with Opposed Rolls (opposing actions done between PCs or a PC and an NPCs) it mentions consulting the three methods (consequence, condition or requirement) under Failed Rolls when the PCs...well..fail the roll. But that is not where these are, and this doesn't help with the feeling that these rules were tacked on when the designers realized this was a problem.

William Melton

Maybe piling on here, but you alluded to the primary issue I ran into running The One Ring intro as well. We used the pre-baked characters (player-selected partial selection) and none of the tests aligned to what the characters were actually good at. They just went around failing rolls and I figured out ways to mitigate them.

Rick Rezinas

The funny thing is, I'm going to start using those two rules in other campaigns, because I think it's just solid mystery game advice. It's also closely related to the Fate system and a few others that stress not to make the players roll unless the difference between success or failure is interesting. In this particular case, I think we all agree, including the devs, that failing to find clues in a mystery game is deeply uninteresting.

Spencer St. James

That's interesting, I was going to use The One Ring as an example which really suffers from a weak ruleset. Wrapped up my campaign of the One Ring last month and while I want to go back to middle earth some day, I'm thinking of using a totally different ruleset. The Alien ruleset in comparison I found to be really fun.

TKB_Legend

Quintin Smith

Case dismissed with prejudice! You should hire yourself out as a high-priced internet attorney for all sorts of social media fights.

Jason Reid

Hey Quinns! Ths is off topic for this post, but seemed the simplest way to reach you: just wanted to provide an accessibility note that the incidental text in your videos (e.g. 'Quinns always plays his games...') occupies the exact same screen space as YouTube's closed captions, so anyone watching with captions on is going miss out on or struggle to read your text. Also, as I assume you know, YT's automated captions are pretty bad (inaccurate, incomplete, and apparently still in 2024 struggling specifically with non-rhotic accents...). I know full proper captioning is a lot of work, but it would be great to see Quinns Quest move toward that goal. Will also take this opportunity to say that I am absolutely in your target audience of people who were put off TTRPGs by the cultural dominance of DnD but who having witnessed your odes to beautiful art books and phenomenal fantasy writing are now more or less fully converted. Thanks very much for the reviews and the very excellent tips (especially loved the GM notes postmortem video); looking forward to more!

soph

Another thing about these “important clue rules” is that they just feel tacked on. Like someone at free league has listened to ken and robin talks about stuff and knew that investigation games should be like that, but knew they weren’t allowed to actually redesign the core system so they just kinda put these rules in like a patch. Because the rules aren’t properly integrated into the core of the year zero system they are super forgettable and feel weird and house ruley. I also think you are just 100% right about the rest of the points here, Quinns.

Ainar Miyata

I would love this, but perhaps skewed towards talking more about *how* these books need to be written, edited, and laid out. I've long gone off books of this size and much prefer more concise stuff, so would love to hear about the balancing act of page count vs clarity.

Max Downton

I chose to read your "this" not as skipping pages, but as grabbing the scissors and your favourite coffee table books, and then gluing neat illustrations on all the pages you decided were "super important".

Mr. N. Hacksaw

Phoenix Quinns, ace attorney! This also highlights the importance of editing and layout to the product. It’s hard for me to believe an editor worth their salt would have let the book out with that sort of ambiguity.

Chris Stagno

But would I then look at the pretty picture and skip the text?

Jere Widenius (Kasanen)

this needs a whole video itself, but i hope it doesn't turn into an OSE love fest which I think is overblown because of the fonts and 2 page class layout that are only important when thumbing though before you buy it.

gm_naahz

It's really dumb, but I tend not to read pages that don't have pictures on them. If there's a wall of text, I convince myself it's probably not important. Perhaps they could slap a really neat illustration next to the super important rules.

Cave Darr

This was very important read to help with the design and development of my TTRPG. Thank you Quinns for the hard truths ♥️

Jere Widenius (Kasanen)

This is why my favorite game is Drowning and Falling https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/299166/Drowning--Falling because it has rules for exactly two things and that's all anyone should ever need

Elias Mulhall

You know, it’s an interesting thing in general to think about what games *don’t* provide mechanics for, and why. Like, obviously all games are going to leave out huge swathes of things that could have mechanics because they aren’t relevant. There’s no rules for hacking (the kind you do with axes excepted, I suppose) in Pathfinder because there’s not going to be any hacking, so it’s a waste of time to model it— but, all the same, there are also things that have no rules because there’s this exact “fruitful void” assumption that the game is *about* this, so the players or at least their characters will be fluent in it, so to speak. And now I’m thinking about how it’s mentioned in the review at hand that there aren’t really rules in Vaesen for gauging what a player knows about the vaesen and how to solve the problems surrounding them, despite that being the real core of the game. A deliberate absence gone wrong, potentially? What are the bare minimum of mechanics for this kind of thing? A lot to think about, really.

Jack Kerger

I have no love for WotC, but blaming them for another company's poorly designed rulebook does feel like a bit of a stretch. Yes WotC perpetuate it (your criticism of the DMG is spot on), but they also inherited it. RPGs in general have a long legacy of confounding rules, over complicated manuals, and basically being unplayable without extensive homebrew. I also hope Free League learns and improves. I really want to love this game

Lojaan

Quinns

Quinns

Quinn moonlighting as defence lawyer confirmed. I wholeheartedly agree, layout and structure matter.

Nathan Camp

Yes! This is the hot yet mild drama that makes me a happy subscriber! Also, this is very affirming of my personal belief that system absolutely matters, and an investigation game that doesn't have solid investigation mechanics front and centered is a game that could stand to be improved. I'm also a little surprised... because Free League's other offerings have been so good from a system perspective. Alien, The One Ring, and Twilight 2000 are examples I show to friends of how a good system really makes a difference.

Robert Haynes

Ah I misunderstood your original (pre-edited) comment, thanks for clarifying!

Tobias Grace

Join us next week as T.T.R.P.G Man takes on his next big case... IN SPACE?!

treev

I have been running a Vaesen campaign for two years, and I honest-to-goodness thought I had houseruled the content on page 40 because I forgot it was there until someone on the Discord pointed it out to me. Given the great and cordial response by the Free League team, I'd love to see an interview either on Quinns Quest, the League Lounge or both talking about the game and acting as a coda talking about this. I saw a lot of commenters say "Well now this doesn't sound like the game for me" but it would be great to showcase to those folks how the conversation has continued!

Bryon Kershaw

I think the key evidence here is the Free League-produced modules. There's three ways to solve the "missed a roll, lost the plot" problem in investigation RPGs: (1) core mechanics that accommodate it, (2) mystery construction that embraces elements like the Three Clue Rule and core clues that never require a roll, and (3) narrative approaches at the table of the Clue-still-found-but-other-Bad-Stuff variety. #1 is the cleanest, but Breakout Boxes & Appendix advice don't count as core mechanics. #2 NEEDs to be found in official module design or it can't be considered an essential part of the system's mystery construction. That's a failure here. #3 is a crutch, and therefore NEEDS to be explicit in official module text or it also can't be considered "part of your game," but rather "ways GMs fix our game." Even if you have breakout boxes in your rulebook that say, "Here's how to fix our game!" Breakout boxes are generally used for guidance, and the way to tell if the guidance is crucial is it's reflected explicitly in officially published modules.

Aaron Sinner

Furthermore, I will be submitting this evidence to the larger class action case I'm building against most TTRPG publishers on the charge of: - Creating RPGs and adventure modules in a manner that obstructs those with limited free time to prep, run, and play in this awesome hobby. Many TTRPGs still seem to prioritize traditions of the genre (big chonky books and modules that read primarily like short stories) over what players and the GM actually need "at the table". They also assume infinite prep time.

Slick Rick

I am running The One Ring 2e from Free League and I love so many aspects of it. The art, as usual, is absolutely stunning. It has mechanics that encourage players and GM to lean into a Tolkienesqe adventure. The expansion beyond canon, while remaining true to canon is incredible. However, both myself and my friend who is helping me with rules at the table, have agreed that the layout and editing and hidden rules are not conducive to helping someone run the game. - Key rules are not boxed out, while minor ones are. - Enemy stat block short hand I don't think is ever translated in the core rule book (I had to go to the unofficial discord for that translation). - There are too many Proper Nouns and they are not chosen with the care that a tired GM needs: e.g. Pierce and Piercing Blow are two very different things in the combat system! Not all of these can be laid at Free League's feet as they inherited the system from another developer, but I would like to submit this as additional evidence to Quinn's case in the matter of the Quinn's v. Free League Publishing! (p.s. I love you Free League. I still buy your books!)

Slick Rick

This entire blog post written in the shower whilst Quinns also thought about the perfect witty retort to really show his old school bully what for.

Gregory Morrison

> You know why horror RPG Mothership doesn’t have hiding or stealth skills? It’s because hiding is so important to Mothership that the developers wanted it to be a conversation at the table and a focal point of the game, and never something that can be collapsed into a dice roll, because a dice roll means players can succeed without engaging in the fiction, or fail to hide even if they had a really good idea. It's my favorite game mechanic, The Fruitful Void! http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/119

Elias Mulhall

I generally enjoy reading big hard covers, but I know I am a little bit weird... Aaaaanyway, I think having a bad explanation of rules has nothing to do with the length or chunkiness of a book. I love those big books with a lot of superfluous information. I don’t mind reading them in bed and having them suddenly kissing my face because my arms gave up. For me, is part of the joy. I also understand the industry needs this type of books, and I am not against that; if this is what they need to keep doing TTRPG, that is great. However, this does not explain why they put rules in such a poor way. Not in order, difficult to understand or read, hard to find and easy to overlook. Give 15 pages of clear, understandable rules and put them in a didactic way, with no illustration but a lot of tables, examples, and visual aids. You know, like a boardgame. Then, and only then, I will eat those 250 pages of lore, jokes, character types, advise, magic items, and whatever.

Fernando Barajas

This is for sure why I prefer lighter rule sets with more “let the players and GM make it up” space.

Roger Leroux

I wrote a TTRPG (for context) and can safely say that I agree with Quinn's reading of this. Investigation of mysteries is the core gameplay of the system, so it should be clearly at the front of the manual's "How to Play" section. (also the redacting of the monster secrets was awesome)

Guybrush

I’ve heard that if you don’t read the rules thoroughly, the bogman comes to you at night and rearranges your shoes

Papperslappen

Class! 🫡

J

No game survives contact with the table. Designers and writers generally know this, or should! It's so easy to miss things, misinterpret things, forget things... hell, people will pick up a new game and run it with habits formed in other systems, despite their best efforts. It's the books job to do it's best at ensuring I can run it as close to the design vision as reasonably possible. How this info is prioritized and presented is so damn critical, and honestly plays a huge role in how likely I am to play a game to begin with! Don't bury the essentials!

Aslan Silva

Free League books always look beautiful, and I think because they have such incredible graphic design they sometimes get a pass on information design. The rulebook absolutely has this issue, but the adventures suffer from it even more. I think I like some of their adventures more than you did in your review, but even the ones I like have 3-4 pages of backstory when a paragraph will do. Massive NPC blockouts that make location descriptions split between pages and things you need to reference in scene sometimes hidden in a paragraph 4 pages back. They can be the best adventure in the world conceptually, but if its a struggle to use then whats the point

Pandatheist

The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact

Todd Christiansen

I think it's a product of a few factors: a perception that elegant systems and concise rules aren't hard to make (easy to read must mean easy to write), and putting too much weight on paper and ink when judging value. Not many people feel good about spending $30 for a pamphlet vs $50 for a chunky hardcover

David

I concur. I'd still probably miss the rules here, so Quinns' overall point is valid—but reading the whole rulebook is something I try to do despite the length of some of those things.

Todd Christiansen

Enjoyable post. The length of TTRPG books makes them miserable to read and it's something I've noticed with a awful lot of books. Mausritter is the opposite and it's brilliant. It only has the rules, and a few very helpful lists of bullet points of principles for the players and GM. It's a super short book and for it, it's one of the best games I've read.

Todd Christiansen

Who me? I’m innocent yer ‘onour

Mitz

Any rule which can mess with game should be placed front and centre in a roleplaying game's rule section, in my opinion. A lot of this comes down to both poor formatting and editing (something which can really put me off from wanting to read a roleplaying game.) Blocks of text are hard to read, choosing the wrong fonts and text colours can be awful and having no index at the back is desperately unhelpful. If you make finding something a skill then near the skill's definition, you could add a a 'what happens if the players fail this' section. If you want someone to play your game you need to make it easy for them to understand how you want it to be played. You'd win your case because you'd cast doubt on the publisher's 'cast iron' case.

Backpack Boom Bap (Tom)

Hey Quintin, the concept of stake resolution, meaning defining what failure means and what's at stake on any given skill roll, is actually quite old and can be used for basically any skill roll in any RPG. PbtA does it a lot, giving the GM moves, FATE implements it as succeed at a cost where the players can choose to succeed at a failed die roll by paying with consequences or other currency. What bothers me more than Vaesen's system (I can always hack any system I see fit and use it instead) is the issue with the missing information bits about the Vaesen you mentioned in your review. The Vaesen are the heart of the game. The system should help the GMs describing them, roleplaying them, giving information about them away. Failing at that would be a real deal breaker.

CrimsonKing

Sounds like they wrote them like the tooltips and tutorial boxes in a video game. But we all know just like here, people ignore them and unless forced to stop and read/force fed the information somehow, (aka, putting it in the actual paragraph you're already reading) people don't read the tutorials

Joseph Lowery

I’m a huge Vaesen Stan. You may have tripped a small bit on the one point but your comments around tools for the table to uncover information on the Vaesen was spot on.

Craig Shipman

This is hilarious, and I hope you continue reviewing in the exact same way so you can get into the exact same instructive hot water. Good on you!!! Quinns Quest is quickly becoming my favorite of the SuSD Cinematic Universe, and I've been here since the Vimeo days.

Zachary Grafman

I think a huge issue here is the idea that rulesets "have" to be a certain number of pages to justify the price. It makes important, relevant information harder and harder to find. The value of a game comes not from its ability to act as a paperweight but in its ability to facilitate play. Im tired of 300 page rule books with 20 pages of good rules and 40 pages of good art. My favorite game of all time is The Ground Itself and a big reason for that is because its 20 pages long. All killer no filler.

CraterMozz

I think there's a legacy in TTRPGs of designing rulebooks that mix mechanics and fiction, sometimes to the detriment of both. As a GM, sometimes I want a technical manual and sometimes I want a lore reference, but usually not both.

David

They absolutely should not. and those decades of experience should be reflected in the game mechanics, not sidebar boxes with tips. The problem here is that they largely slapped the Year Zero Engine and the investigation genre together and rather than modifying the engine, they included the tips that people would eventually likely homebrew themselves when they found out the engine just doesn't work here.

Leo

Hey! Fair points, I have no stake in Vaesen either way but agree the book handled it's rules poorly, but... I read every page of every RPG book I'm actually considering running! 😅 Excluding only really obviously unneeded stuff like 'so, what is an RPG?'

Marthell

Quinns

Quinns

In the effort to give Vaesen designers a bit of a break and target this back to the real villian (or monopoly... Are those different?), D&D, I think that a lot of the tabletop community is accepting of giant manuals with poorly designed instruction because of WotC. You may think the DMG should start with some practical advice about how to run a game, or what the core themes are of DND, or how and when to call for skill checks. Nope. It starts with how to build your own world. That practical stuff doesn't come until CHAPTER 8! After all of the rules for magic items. Come on! Rulebooks seem to be getting better. I pray Vaesen comes out with a second edition that addresses some of the problems because the vibe of the game is just fantastic.

birdmilk

I hope you washed your hands after dropping that hot blog

Mitz

What if I’m new to TTRPGs and I’ve picked up Vaesen because it looks wonderful? Games shouldn’t rely on ‘decades’ of experience to be possible to run.

Tobias Grace

Failed tests (p.39) rules by ommission. It says "Failing a test means that something detrimental or unexpected happens to you". It does not say that you fail to achieve your goal. I interpret this as: "You fail a force test to kick open a door, resulting in an opened door and a broken foot". More confusingly, investigation tells you it gives you clues if you succeed, but the box next to it says you won't get hidden clues this way (which are given automatically if you look in the right place). Again I must interpret this as "investigation clues, hidden clues, and progression clues are different". Investigation clues in my mind are simply tips or optional info PCs can find, helpful if the PCs keep missing that one clue you want them to find. Interpreting rules through ommission is confusing, especially since many who read these rules use a game like D&D as a baseline and have a tendency to default to that system. I also think that investigation games in general (though not all of them) are confusing, in that they give you an elaborate and fancy system to work with, but tell you NOT to use that system when dealing with the central aspect of the game: investigation. YZE is not made for investigation games, so it requires all the more clarity in writing and guidance on how to run investigation games. It does not naturally fit investigation games the same way as, say, Blades in the Dark fits heist games. I think your criticism is valid and it highlights and important point I think the writers and designers of the game can work with in future editions.

twerp

Looking forward to the next blog with the 'Quinns defends himself 😭' tag. Well said here. Reading this, I can see how annoyed the book clearly made you, but I think you did a good job of being diplomatic in your review. Must be quite refreshing to have your Patreon blog to really let loose safely.

Jim Huxter

This is part of why I lean towards running light systems: I'm much less likely to miss or forget an obscure but somehow vital rule somewhere. Also, I apply Chris McDowell's ICI doctrine to everything and even in an investigation I err on the side of providing too much information. I'm just throwing all the clues at them wherever they go. Skill check failures are for complications, and complications are delicious.

Curtis Hay

Okay I feel so vindicated! I used to run for players who read every single word of every single page of some long RPG books and I get running per Hoyle but these books are long, it’s easy to miss things, and I just want to play darn it.

Nash Farmer

Or at least in like the first five or so pages when you’re outlining the summary of your game. Some of the best RPG books know you’ll skim rules. The important rules are listed every so often, scattered throughout the book.

Andrew Hill

Nah because a game publisher should not include homebrew tips to fix their game WITHIN their game. Everything they mentioned is community best practices for running mystery games in general. Practices that folks developed over decades of running face first against the fact that dice based random outcomes and investigations are two concepts at odds with each other. As a publisher, if you are trying to make a mystery solving game, be brave and try to solve these problems with clever mechanics, dont just perpetuate the problems with the genre. Vaesen is a wonderful book. One that I own and keep on my shelf. But it is not, a game that I have ever planned to run.

Leo

Honestly more games should take the Gumshoe approach to information discovery. You never ever need to roll to find information, but your trained skills will tell you how the information you find is colored. Skill checks are for DOING things - applying your knowledge to action.

Rebecca Lawrence

I forgive you, funny tabletop man. 🤙

Clean Beans

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.... What IS a game?"

Danny Tallon

Quinns

I completely agree. If you wanna argue your rules are clear, you can't follow it up with "Well actually, on page 177, in this subsection...". This feels like it falls under the heading of Vaesen designers / expert GMs becoming so familiar with the system they forget they're abiding by its spirit rather than its text. Also, the 'give a condition' solution is only a halfway house to mixed successes, since it relies on the GM's discretion to actually implement them. You can tell they're an afterthought when they're framed as a method of "salvaging" the story.

Eóin Dooley

FULL ACQUITTAL!

Evan Diaz

Nicely put, and interesting observations! I will say that the "easy to miss box" was the first thing that drew my attention ("ooh, this looks different from the rest of the text") but I also only had the context of looking at that singular page to go with it, rather than skimming it as part of a longer read

Salmon

Get 'em Quinn

PJ Underwood

Yeah, if something is so important to the flow of the game, you'd think it'd be outlined more than once.

Nathan Heisz