Review: Dreaming Cities
Dreaming Cities is subtitled Tri-Stat Urban Fantasy Genre. I’m not a Tri-Stat player or gamemaster, but I picked the book up at Gencon because I have a certain interest in the genre and, frankly, the price was right. If the price is low enough, I’ll often pick up older game books, even for games I have no intention of ever running, simply to mine them for ideas. It’s worth taking the chance.
I’ve been looking it over for the last month, so the time seems about right to review it.
The Book
Dreaming Cities is a 272-page hardcover of standard size. It credits five authors (Jason L. Blair, Jamais Cascio, Phil Masters, Jo Ramsay, and Liz Rich) and was published by the now-defunct Guardians of Order in 2005. It seems very solidly put together, with a nice, heavy cover. It’s a complete game book, containing rules for the Tri-Stat system along with the urban fantasy elements. Its pages are quite packed; there’s very little interior art (and most, if not all, of that in two-page “splashes”, not interspersed with the text). Additionally, the text is printed in a small font size. Tables are reasonably frequent, helping to break up some of the text.
In my limited experience with Guardians of Order, I’ve found their production values to be very good. Dreaming Cities is no exception: this book seems very sturdy, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if it held together for decades of moderately heavy use.
I found it difficult to read, however. Page upon page of small print, broken up only by tables, makes thumbing through the book more of a chore than a pleasure. This compounded some of the issues I had with the content, which I’ll discuss more later on. The placement of the book’s content seems reasonable enough, but its layout is a little wearying. This is not insurmountable, but it did put a damper on my initial enthusiasm.
The System
Dreaming Cities uses the Tri-Stat System, also known as Tri-Stat dX. Tri-Stat is a generic system, in the mold of GURPS or HERO; its design is intended to allow its use for games in any genre. It’s also meant to be lighter on rules than either of those games. Sometimes it advertises as a “rules-light” system, but I think it would be more accurate to call it rules-moderate, because there are definitely some crunchy bits here. As far as I can tell, Dreaming Cities includes the full Tri-Stat rules, as well as examples of using them to create an urban fantasy setting. Tri-Stat has been used in numerous other games, including the anime RPG Big Eyes, Small Mouth and the superhero game Silver Age Sentinels.
In basic concept, Tri-Stat is a point-based roll-under system based on two dice. Which type of dice, specifically, are a function of the setting and the characters intended to participate in that setting: 2d4 for subhuman, 2d6 for a typical human level, 2d8 for posthuman, 2d10 for superhuman, 2d12 for inhuman, and 2d20 for godlike. Most Dreaming Cities games, the rulebook notes, will be oriented toward the 2d6 or 2d8 level. The power level helps to determine the number of character points players start with — subhumans get 25-50 points, while gods get upwards of 300.
Tri-Stat characters have, not surprisingly, three primary character stats: Body represents all physical aspects of the character, such as strength, speed, and agility; Mind represents mental aspects including knowledge, wit, and memory; and Soul represents spiritual and mystical aspects such as luck, willpower, psychic ability, and magical affinity. For those characters whose concept includes being strong and tough but slow, there are special Defects later on to allow for that; otherwise, a broad range of traits are abstracted into these three.
Stats are bought with character points on a one-for-one basis. The minimum stat for a PC is 2. The average stat for an adult human is 4. The maximum value for a PC stat is equal to the maximum roll on the game’s dice — 8 for subhuman, 40 for godlike — although the rules establish a “talent threshold” mostly equal to half that number plus two, and suggest that the GM “require a solid character concept” before allowing stats in excess of that number.
Any character points not spent on Stats can be spent on Attributes. Attributes include such mundane traits as Highly Skilled, which grants the purchaser extra skill points to spend, as well as such supernatural traits as Invisibility, Mind Control, or a personal Pocket Dimension. Attributes can also include a character’s Wealth, Organizational Ties, and Henchmen. Different Attributes have different costs, and most can be purchased in “levels”
Attributes are where most of the “heavier” rules come into play. Not only are they a substantial list in and of themselves, taking up 37 pages (and remember, small font) — but they can be modified. A character can have Power Modifier Values (PMVs) to increase a power’s range, area, duration, or targets. It can have special Restrictions and Defects limiting its use. There are progression charts that differ depending on whether the power’s progression is Fast, Medium, or Slow — or sometimes it’s Linear. Or Reversed. Not to mention the special cases.
The Special Attack attribute can be especially complex, since there are so many options available, and most of them affect the cost of the power. It’s really a lot like HERO in application — but more limited. On the other hand, the math is more limited, too.
The Attribute system is very flexible, but I think it falls short of being truly generic. The options are broad, but also limited; much is forced into the umbrella of Special Attack. The rules, which are generally reasonably elegant, grow thorny here, and it’s also the most math-heavy portion of the system. There’s a catch-all “Unique Attribute” and “Unique Defect” intended to cover the outlying cases, but no guidance for applying them — they boil down to “work something out with your GM,” which you could do anyway. (I suppose making the option explicit isn’t a bad thing, but an example or two would have been nice.)
Next comes a list of skills. There are 59 skills presented, 10 of which are combat skills such as Melee Defense and Unarmed Attack. The remaining 49 cover a pretty broad range, from Acrobatics and Architecture through Foreign Culture and Management/Administration to Visual Arts and Wilderness Survival. Like attributes, skills are purchased in levels, and each skill’s cost varies according to its utility in the campaign. In Dreaming Cities’ urban fantasy, the Occult skill costs 6 points per level; in a high-tech hard-sci-fi game, it might cost only 1. A chart listing the costs for the urban fantasy genre is included.
I like the conceit of shifting point costs along with genre for a universal system. That also tends to have the effect of making the characters purchase lower levels of the most useful skills, meaning there’s still a chance of failure — they can’t stack up the levels high enough to ensure success. However, it seems to me that not all skills are equal in application. There are very focused skills, like Boating and Climbing, and then there are skills that grant a whole breadth of knowledge, such as Cultural Arts and Physical Sciences. The short skill descriptions don’t always help. Physical Sciences covers “Scientific training in the way the universe works, including the necessary background knowledge.” — that’s the whole description. Its listed specializations include astromony, biochemistry, chemistry, engineering, geology, mathematics, and physics.
That’s an awful lot of knowledge for one skill to cover, even at a cost of 4 points per level. In contrast, Boating, at 2 points per level, covers “The ability to safely operate a watercraft” (again, the full skill description). That doesn’t seem as though it provides half the utility of mastery of astronomy, biochemistry, etc.
Oh, but if you want to master biology instead of biochemistry, you’ll need to buy Biological Sciences, instead. That also covers botany, zoology, genetics, and physiology. It’s a bargain at 3 points per level.
Characters are apparently intended only to purchase a couple of levels of any given skill; 3 levels is “expert training,” and 5 levels is enough to be a “world leader” in the area. 10 levels is “godlike.” Starting skill points are fairly low — 20 for humans, 30 for posthumans, up to 60 for gods — but more can be purchased by taking the Highly Skilled Attribute, at the rate of 10 skill points per character point. The separation of skill points from character points is a bit kludgey in my mind — I prefer the universal-point method GURPS and HERO use. One thing fewer to keep track of during character generation.
As is common for point-buy systems, characters can take Defects to gain more character points to spend. 48 options are presented, from the usual Physical Impairments and Marked (a distinguishing characteristic that makes the character easy to recognize) to Conditional Ownership (the character has an item that’s “really” owned by the organization he works for, such as military gear) and Owned (the character is figuratively or literally “owned” by some organization — such as the military).
Missing are most psychological limitations; in Tri-Stat, being honorable, lazy, overconfident, and the like don’t get you character points. Only limitations over which the character has no real control (such as Blind Fury, a berserk condition, or Phobia, an irrational fear) earn points. This is somewhat similar to HERO’s rule that “a disadvantage is only worth points if it disadvantages you,” but I think that psychological limitations, even ones that can be overcome, do that.
The basic method of task resolution is to roll two dice and try to score under a target number. The number could be a check against a Stat, or it could be a skill check, in which case the character’s Stat + skill level is the target number. The die roll can be modified by difficulty and other circumstances; a “difficult” check takes a -2 penalty with 2d6, or a -4 with 2d8. Skill checks therefore default to the level of the appropriate Stat (or average of Stats), but the GM can declare that a given check requires training, and fails automatically if the character lacks the skill.
And now we come to the biggest problem of the Tri-Stat system: Combat. Combat plays out as a series of skill checks. An attacker tries to roll under his Attack Combat Value (ACV) — the average of his three Stats — plus his skill level in the combat skill that guides the attack. So far, so good. But if he hits, the defender then tries to roll under his Defense Combat Value (DCV) — his ACV – 2 — plus his skill level in the appropriate combat defense skill. If this defense check succeeds, the attack misses.
See the problem here? A character’s defense is only a little worse than his attack, at base, and can be further improved by buying defense skills. Given the probability distribution on a two-die curve, a couple of levels can lead to defense succeeding a large percentage of the time. Which means the character takes no damage from the attack. Which means combats can go on for a really long time.
Now consider that one character point gets you about enough skill points to buy one level each of Ranged Defense and Melee (or Unarmed) Defense. Even if your campaign starts at reasonable defense levels — a typical 2d6 character might have 6 ACV and 4 DCV, plus a level of defense skill — it can rapidly shoot up once characters gain some experience. Three experience points turns that starting character with the effective DCV of 5 into one with an effective DCV of 8. Six experience points gives him an 11, good enough to defend any time he doesn’t roll a 12 on 2d6. Even if he spends only a fraction of his points on combat skills, he’ll reach these extreme levels of defense pretty quickly.
Making multiple defenses in a round does start to apply penalties after a certain point, but taking advantage of that necessitates throwing large numbers of enemies at the players in order to challenge them. A one-on-one fight will never endanger the character in this situation, because the attacker’s skill has no impact on the chance of successfully defending. This is far too easy to min-max to effectively “never” be hit unless swarmed.
Yes, the obvious solution is to house-rule a cap to defenses (and probably to attacks, too). But this is still a glaring weakness of the system. It’s what turned me off of Big Eyes, Small Mouth when I first played it a decade ago, and I’m a little disappointed to find that later editions of the game system didn’t fix it.
The Content
But that’s enough about the system. The actual meat of the book, from my perspective, is the setting and related advice. After all, I knew going in that I probably wouldn’t be playing with the system. So what is there to find in Dreaming Cities?
Well, the introduction is promising. In a couple of pages, it neatly defines the urban fantasy genre and some subgenre variants and related concepts (like magical realism). After that, it covers the usual “What is Roleplaying?” and “What is <this system>?” questions, although it does so in a fairly perfunctory way. This doesn’t bother me, and I think there’s enough there for a new player to get a grasp of the concept.
The book then drops the reader into the system, and the next six chapters deal with all the character-creation stuff I discussed above.
Chapters 7 and 8 are player-oriented setting information; the first offers some example character types, with character-creation templates. These range from the cop on the beat through the journalist and religious leader, to the cultist. Also included are sample templates for ghost and faerie characters. The mix is adequate, but uninspired, and the flavor text that discusses each template is pretty dry. There’s some effort given to equating these modern archetypes with fantasy ones — the biker is “the knight-errant, drifting from place to place in search of adventure” — but these are often pretty banal. (The Religious Leader is equivalent to “A priest whose life is dedicated to serving a deity or deities.” Really? I wouldn’t have guessed…)
The following chapter discusses magic in urban fantasy, noting that it’s often used in subtle manners, as opposed to the more blatant displays of fantasy fiction. There’s a little bit of everything here — oaths and geasa, sympathy and contagion, ritual magic, innate wizardry, necromancy, psychic powers. Most of these provide a couple of sample effects for inspiration. On the whole, this is a pretty useful (though short) chapter for running an urban fantasy game. However, I found it oddly sterile. Part of this might be the system-heavy presentation. Whatever it is, there’s cool stuff here, but it lacks a sense of wonder. Also, the section covering black magic was disappointingly short.
The next two chapters cover game mechanics and combat, and we pick up with chapter 11, Gamemastering. This is an odd chapter, in that it doesn’t include much actual advice for gamemastering in general — but it does include a lot of information related to gamemastering in the urban fantasy genre. The “basics” section is only three pages long, and it glosses over a great deal. However, the discussion of the different themes and common elements in urban fantasy is quite detailed, and numerous sample plot hooks are provided. Then at the very end, there are two full pages of advice on running a game at a convention.
I’m not sure what to make of this chapter. It reads as if a large chunk of its beginning might have been cut out during the editing process. It’s very sketchy for new GMs, but it provides a pretty fair genre overview for experienced GMs, making it quite useful — but only to someone who already knows the tricks of running a game.
The chapter does include one thing that I commend the authors for — a good-sized list of “Works of Urban Fantasy.” I find such lists very useful when searching for inspiration; the list in the back of the first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide served me well, and a glance at this one suggests that it would, too. (There’s also an earlier list of roleplaying games with urban fantasy elements that might serve a similar purpose.)
All of that takes up 137 pages. The remainder of the book (minus the index and appendices) is devoted to three sample urban fantasy settings.
The first of these, The Nightmare Chronicles, is devoted to a secret war between Earth and the Realm of Nightmares. The barrier between the two worlds has begun to break down, and inhabitants of the Realm, demon-like creatures known as Ashigath, have begun to walk Earth relatively freely. A magical effect called The Veil keeps them hidden from most natives of Earth; anyone who sees an Ashigath in its natural form will, because of the Veil, begin to forget and rationalize the experience, until he remembers it, if at all, only as a bad dream.
There are some Earth folk who aren’t affected by the Veil, though. These are the Dreamtouched, humans with some Ashigath blood running through their veins, and the Deathless, warriors from Earth who had been kidnapped to the Nightmare Realm to fight in a war between the demons, and who have now returned. Player characters will belong to one of these groups.
The setting is fairly detailed, including notes about what’s going on in various countries around the world, some possible plot threads, and a fairly extensive bestiary of Ashigath. I don’t find it terribly inspiring, but it is well-executed; I would find it pretty easy to pick up the book and run a game in this setting. I don’t know whether it would sustain my interest for long, but I can probably use some of the elements to flavor a confrontation with demons or devils in my own game.
The World at Twilight setting presents a world where Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse mythology, has been destroyed. This destruction has somehow led to the manifestation on Earth of what had been myths, legends, and fairy tales. Magic is returning to Earth; Prince Charming and Thor might be encountered, reincarnated, on the streets of the city. Fairies and goblins are making a comeback. Even modern myths are back — Elvis has been sighted numerous times. And they’re all trying to live out their stories in hopes of returning to their own world.
It’s sort of a kitchen-sink setting — a little bit of everything.
I really wanted to like this one. I’ve played in urban fantasy games with a similar “all the stories are real” concept before, so it’s right up my alley. Unfortunately, it seems as if little real work has gone into developing the setting as presented. Far too many pages are taken up with jokey references to stories — hey, what if Thor is a construction worker, and his hammer is a jackhammer? What if the Big Bad Wolf is a businessman named Hans Woolver? There’s some neat stuff here — I like the Order of Librarians, magicians who have taken the motto “knowledge is power” quite literally — but so much of it seems wasted on uninteresting, surface-level “equivalencies.”
The third setting, The Small Folk, makes up for all of that. It’s brilliant. The characters are among the eponymous Small Folk, and they’re trying to get by in the modern world. A while back, as industry expanded, the Small Folk went into hiding, and they’ve been there ever since — living unseen in human dwellings, dealing with such dangers as rats, cats, and birds, not to mention the danger of being stepped on by a human or run over by a lawnmower. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts are a myth, or an archaic institution that no longer exists, but still lies at the center of Small Folk culture.
The Small Folk are all one “species,” but they separate themselves into several “cliques.” These cliques (given names such as Boggarts, Brownies, Pixies, and Sprites) have their own “personalities,” their own specializations in faerie magic, their own small tables of quotes summarizing their relationships with other cliques… and… that’s right. It’s a White Wolf parody.
And it’s a stunning one. The authors have managed to get the White Wolf style down remarkably well for some gentle mockery. There’s the clique of flighty (literally) artistic types, the clique of “woe is me” emo fairies, the clique of supercompetent efficiency-focused businessmen, the click of weird steampunk-type throwbacks, and so forth. It’s incredibly well done.
Most importantly, it’s not just a parody. The setting works. It presents an intriguing idea, fleshes it out enough to support play within it, and it seems like a ton of fun to play. After reading it, I want to run a game in this setting. That’s a success in my books. Small Folk is the best thing in Dreaming Cities. I would’ve liked to see more of it, in fact; it could have been its own book.
The Price
The back cover says $39.95 US. It’s not worth that. You can find it for under $10 now, though. Amazon marketplace
The Verdict
Dreaming Cities is generally an adequate product tied to a suboptimal game system. While it gets points for presenting a full game, instead of being simply a “worldbook” requiring a separate purchase of the Tri-Stat system rules, it loses points for offering very little to players other than the system.
Experienced GMs will probably find some useful tips for running an urban fantasy game. Newer GMs, however, might find themselves overwhelmed. The book offers very little introductory advice for a GM. (I recommend a copy of the fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide for that.)
The three sample settings included contain, among them, over 120 pages of inspirational material. The quality of the settings varies, but there are some good ideas to be found in all of them, and the Small Folk setting is truly outstanding.
I rate Dreaming Cities 7/10 for fluff and 2/10 for crunch.
(Edited 9/16/08 for spelling correction and 9/17/08 to insert a cut.)
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