Review: Cage of Reason

[Kuma_Pageworks]

CAGE OF REASON (#40)
REVIEWER NAME: Brian Hollenbeck/Kuma Pageworks

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 5

Feedback: Cage of Reason blends 18th Century philosophical battles with modern-day wrestling. The ingredients – law, team and steel. I went back and forth on this score – overall, I think that the connections between the chosen ingredients are half-hearted. But then I also think that that it’s a combination that I wouldn’t have come up with myself. The time component is strong, with each session having its own purpose – showcasing a different wrestling extravaganza.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 8

Feedback: The game is quite well written, and it should be immediately clear to the reader what’s going on – which is an asset, considering the odd nature of the game’s combination – philosophy + wrestling.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 8

Feedback: Cage of Reason is quite complete, with everything that you need to play except a working knowledge of 18th Century philosophers. The game gets around this by suggesting that you create fictional characters. I would have liked to have seen a selection of historical philosophers and orators in the back of the game, simply to help players find their ground with creating moves for their own characters. The author does a great job with the sample characters, but doesn’t offer a lot of advice on how to come up with the moves and special moves on your own.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 7

Feedback: I’m not sure how effective the game would be at the table – I’ve heard of one group giving it a try already, so maybe it’s just me – but the juxtaposition of the two in the game might leave a lot of folks cold.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 6

Final Feedback: This was the hardest of my four official games to review. I want to like this game – I want to like it a lot. But the professional wrestling stuff leaves me cold and makes me rate it a bit lower than I would otherwise in this category. On the other hand, I think that it’s a very creative and inventive game – which is something that I’m all for and want to reward. I think it’s a good sign that a game can actually make me think this hard about my own tastes in gaming.

TOTAL: 34. Average: 6.8

[redivider]

Brian,

Thanks for the thought & balance you put into the ratings.

Using real enlightenment figures as pre-made characters is a good idea. Ive been planning to include more sample characters/villains but basing some of them off real major & minor historical figures would be a nice touch.

playtest report is at-



mark

[Destriarch]

Rolling on from the last review, here are my thoughts:

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 8
Feedback: The time constraint is there fairly solidly, mostly in the sense that the 'wrestling match' portion of the game involves the running time of the weekly TV show that the wrestling matches are aired on. It's not so much part of the rules since it's virtual time rather than real time, but I'd say that it counts. I've offered a similar option in my own entry so it would be hypocritical of me to mark down for this anyway On the other hand the rules could have supported this time limit a little more, but let's not split hairs or be too hypercritical. Let's just say that the time limit was used reasonably well.

The ingredients used where Team, Steel and Law. They have all been used to an extent, though some more effectively than others. 'Team' refers to tag team style matches, while 'Steel' refers to steel cage matches. There are some minor rules validating these inclusions, although the ones for the steel cage match were a little weak and cosmetic to my mind. In particular I felt that the link to Law was more tenuous than others, refering apparently to the various natural laws that were made popular during the age of Enlightenment during which the game is apparently set.

As a whole, the game reminded me strongly of that Monty Python sketch where an atheist and a clergyman, instead of arguing about the existence or non-existence of God, decide to wrestle for it instead, because in essence that's what the game entails: philosophers wrestling instead of philosophising, and vice versa.



2) CLARITY (1-10): 6
Feedback: Grammar and spelling are decent enough, although the text does make use (mostly due to its subject matter, which is rather high-brow) of some long words and complicated concepts that some players may have difficulty getting their heads around. Character creation is also quite maths-intensive since the points cost of a move is based upon its damage multiplied by its position on the chart. Given the large number of points a player has to spend, it could take a long tedious amount of fiddling around with where each move is placed to get the desired effect. A computerised character generator program would be a major boon here, as without one the process is tiresome.

One thing that I am still unclear of is whether the players are supposed to be wrestling or debating during the combat mechanic. Presumably they are wrestling, but their wrestling moves are defined as social type attacks, for instance rallying support and satirising one's opponent, rather than physical ones. It would appear that this duplicity is intentional from the introductory spiel. The wrestling is basically an extended metaphor for a more cerebral form of wrestling. In any case, character creation revolves around philosophy and intellectual wrangling, but the game itself when you get started is a plain-and-simple slobberknocker.

Fortunately the actual process of play is reasonably well-described and supported by copious examples so it is at least reasonably easy to comprehend once you're past the overly intellectual parts. I can't help feeling though that in some places what is written as a list of numbers straight down the page could have been more attractively and clearly expressed in tabular form.

One aspect that does need to be clarified is the pre-match show. During this the promoter (a revolving position taken by each player in turn on subsequent sessions) can arrange for several special events such as behind the scenes 'hidden camera' footage of the wrestlers, music being played, introductions of each wrestler, talking trash on the microphone etc. However I cannot find any reference to how many of these special events are allowed to take place, or if there can be as many or as few as the promoter likes. Since each event can have a substantial effect upon the match that follows it seems strange that no limits have been imposed. Especially strange since the character creation process and indeed the match itself are both quite structured in approach.



3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 7
Feedback: The game is reasonably complete as it stands, all the rules are there, there is a decent preamble on what the Age of Enlightenment was/is, and there are even a couple of example characters and a character sheet, which is always a bonus. By the way, the portrait on one of the examples on the copy I have seems to be corrupted, not sure if this happened during the download or if it's a problem in the original file. There is even a cover, although this has clearly been put together by cutting and pasting images from 18th century engravings, possibly Hogarth. I'm not marking the product up or down because of this since art isn't part of the scoring process, but I thought it deserved a mention. However the wrestling concept itself only actually involves rules for cage matches (which only differ cosmetically from normal matches anyway) and tag matches. It would have been nice to have a few other wrestling matches included. I would also have preferred that the setting was explained a little more concisely. The duplicitous nature of the game's setting is confusing to say the least and it could have been better put. Quite simply it didn't put me at the centre of the game and make me feel like I was part of an interesting surreal world so much as giving me the impression that I was reading two separate articles, one about philosophy in the 1800's and one about modern wrestling. The two didn't really marry up in the blurb.



4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 7

Feedback: The main problem I have with the game's "combat" mechanic (whether you want to think of it as wrestling or debate) is almost entirely random. There are very few tactical decisions to make. To decide what move your wrestlers do, you roll dice on the chart. To decide if your wrestler is pinned, you roll dice versus a difficulty. To decide WHEN your wrestler is pinned there is a little double rule (which took me a couple of seconds to work out I'll admit) based on what kinds of moves are performed and how much damage is dealt. Sure there are a few things that you can do to improve your chances slightly, but these are mostly 'once per match' effects many of which are based on whether or not your wrestler took part in certain 'before the show' items, received a formal introduction etc. Practically all of the strategy is in designing your wrestler in the first place and knowing when to 'tag out' during a tag team match. This kinda makes the game feel like one of those old automatic random wrestling match generators that went around the internet a few years back.



5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 5
Final Feedback: The game has an interesting concept but does not put it across to the reader all that well, providing intellectual musings rather than a solid integration of the diametrally opposite disciplines of debate and all-in wrestling. I would probably play it once as an interested experiment if other members of my regular group were anxious to give it a whirl, but I don't feel that I would have any desire to do so again later. Like so many computer-based wrestling games, I think all the fun is in writing the characters in the first place with much less inherent in the matches.


TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 33

Ash