Che Webster

Palaeolithic Voyages

Yesterday, I sat down and read through all of the FKR booklet, “Palaeolithic Voyages”. The world material in this little booklet is good, offering a flavoursome vision of a prehistoric game focused on our hunter-gatherer forebears. Big thanks to Paul Jennings for creating it!

Even though the rules are far too “lite” for my taste – comprising basically a series of quite nice 1d6 random tables to generate interesting encounter material, an abstract system of “moves” to represent the nomadic nature of the People, and a 2d6 opposed roll with no modifiers for resolution – there is much to commend the game.

I gleaned some interesting clues as to the approach to roleplaying which appeals to me when I considered the character sheet. It is descriptive and defines the character in terms that are much more in-world: the characters themselves might recognise and use those terms. In other words, a sheet for the players without numbers resonated deeply with my previous thoughts about Otherworld-immersion.

Palaeolithic Voyages also nicely outlined the kind of Palaeolithic world that I have been angling towards for a long time now. I felt I could easily leverage it for some game play, making it well worth the time and money. It seems to me that the descriptive character sheet combined with some traditional RPG play based in this vision of the world could work.

The book did make it very clear to me that what I seek in terms of traditional roleplaying is very different to the negotiated player-GM discussions about stakes and possible outcomes that is presented here. I want players to be oriented in their character’s perspective, not hovering around them in the kind of abstract manner described.

Overall, this is a very compact but effective package for setting up a World-focused primeval game with Neolithic hunters as characters. The art is nice, the suggestions around the imagined past interesting, and there are loads of nice scenarios that can chosen or generated from the tables. I just need more than “roll 2d6” for rules.

Game on!

6 comments

  1. Thanks for a really even-handed discussion of the game, Che. It’s much appreciated. I really understand your feelings about the 2d6 vs 2d6 resolution system, and it absolutely is predicated on a conversation in the meta about consequences. A background in Burning Wheel, Torchbearer and also Blades in the Dark makes me comfortable with this approach, but it does necessitate a clear switch between more immersive play and the “slow mo'” of conflict resolution. You might find that you could get on with it as a player even if as a GM it really doesn’t appeal – I say this because by-and-large I find myself nodding in agreement with the things you say about play style, even if I’m a pretty hard pass on GURPS in all its manifestations these days.

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    • Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for creating the game!

      On the meta discussion about consequences, I doubt I would enjoy that because I seek Otherworld-immersion and close marrying of my perspective with that of the character: I just want to inhabit the make-believe while I play. But I love the character sheet and the focus on the world you suggested here.

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      • My experience suggests that in those moments when we step back to examine the action and the possible outcomes – which clearly is a different stance from being directly in character – we nonetheless deepen our understanding of both character and world. Perhaps one way to look at this might be as the equivalent of the character’s own vivid recollections of the action, as they replay it afterwards, wondering what else they might have done. In any event, immersion and close marrying of perspectives with in-world perspectives is exactly what we were after with PV, and exactly what we have found. I can honestly say that I have never run such vivid combats and tasks as I have in that game, nor seen such fear and excitement amongst my players. A proud boast perhaps, but I came to this approach down a similar road to the one you describe, looking for what sound like very similar things. You doubt you would enjoy it, but perhaps one day you should try it. 🙂

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      • Thanks, Paul. I think I prefer to focus in-game on my character and the world. Those reflections come out of game, or before and after the action of the core play in-character. It’s simply a matter of wanting to do one particular type of play at a time, rather than switching in and out of different forms of play all at once. But, for sure, I would be keen to try Palaeolithic Voyages… perhaps as a player rather than as a GM.

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