RPG of the Week

Trials of the Grail: Distilled
Author: Jasper McChesney
Length: 50 pages
Price: $7.00 (PDF)
Publisher: Primeval Games Press primevalpress.com

Trials of the Grail: Distilled is actually the second edition of the game, supposedly much more keenly honed than the first edition, and it shows. I'm not familiar with the original so I can't compare, but the current edition is more than worth the $7 the PDF costs on its own merits.

So, what kind of game is it? Like many little indie games, it's a carefully forged tool for one type of game. In this particular case, we're talking games structured like a traditional Grail quest.

This may seem limiting, but it's not. The devil is, indeed, in the details. The Grail quest is viewed in archetypal terms. Yes, you could actually play Arthurian knights questing for the Grail. Or you could play disaffected teens trying to bring a sense of cool back to an old, run-down neighborhood by getting a pop star (the Grail) to perform there. Or you could play post-apocalyptic mutants trying to find a cure (the Grail) for a mysterious plague. Or conspiracy theorists trying to find The Truth (a Grail, indeed) behind the JFK assassination.

All the stories above would share the same approximate structure in Trials of the Grail, but would be very different games. In many ways, the structure grants freedom. The players and GM don't have to worry about what direction the campaign is going to go, or who is going to do what. They have a reasonable outline to work from, and tools to help them flesh out that outline. This grants one the freedom to focus on other details, like the characters themselves, and the world they live in. It's more structured than many "traditional" RPGs like Vampire: The Masquerade, but still very loose, with a lot of detail to be filled in as you go, and surprises in store. It is NOT a railroad, following one track.

That said, what do you really get for your $7? You get a PDF reference sheet, a PDF character sheet, and a PDF of the rules, 50 pages long. That may seem short, but it's packed with rules, techniques, and examples.

No space is wasted: The only art is what's on the cover, and the layout is clean and easy to read. Don't think that just because there's no art there's no atmosphere; the text does an excellent job, and the layout itself, including font choice, does a beautiful job of making the rules and examples both clear and evocative, without moving into some of the unreadable excesses that White Wolf is sometimes guilty of.

Okay, then, but what's in the text?

The book opens, naturally enough, with a one-page introduction, which gets straight to the point of what the game is about. "Trials of the Grail is a game about quests. It is about searching for the larger than life, which when found will make things better... Trials of the Grail is also about judgment. An easy quest is no quest at all..."

Chapter One is about setting up the game. Who are the Questors? Are they knights, teenagers, mutants, or what? What is the Grail, and what does it stand for? The Grail is to heal the King. Who is the King? The old hipster patriarch of the once-hep neighborhood, perhaps? Because the King is ill, so is the Land he rules or represents, so what is that Land? To pass judgment and obtain the Grail, the Questors will have to carry out deeds of Virtue. What is Virtue in this context? For teenagers, maybe it's simply being cool without being mean. Ultimately the Questors will strive for Wisdom. What constitutes Wisdom in this setting? What makes someone wise about the world?

The section does into detail about what each of these terms mean, the sort of options you can consider for each of them, and how your choices will color the game. In only a few short pages, it gives all sorts of ideas for games, and sparks the imagination of anyone who's ever even considered running a game, or what kind of game they'd like to be in.

Chapter Two covers the basics. How to make Statements (that's capitalized for a reason) about the game world and confirm they are true, what constitutes conflict, and how a conflict is resolved, including how dice are rolled. (It's a basic dice-pool system, using ten-sided dice. You roll dice equal to the character's Talent aiming for a target number determined by Skill, and count successes. See below for more on Talent and Skill.) Most of this may seem like old hat to many gamers, but it's worth paying attention. The section on Statements get expanded on later: the game gives over some authorial control to the players that is normally reserved for the GM in a game like D&D, and the terms defined in this chapter are used to explain those powers later.

Most notably, when a player succeeds in a Trial (a conflict), he narrates the success of his character. The GM only narrates what happens with a Trial if the Trial fails, and even then the Infirmary gained is determined by the player (see below).

Chapter Three goes into more detail about creating the Questors. There is a single Questor who is a Lead, the Questor that will eventually find the Grail. The other Questors are Supporting Questors.

Don't think the roles are unequal. They're just different. The Lead starts out less capable than the Supporting Questors, and the Supporting Questors are granted narrative powers that the Lead doesn't have, particularly at the end of the game.

Regardless, this chapter goes over creating the various characters, setting forth their Aptitudes (think skills/attributes -- in fact, each Aptitude is divided up into Talent and Skill numbers), their Strengths, their Weaknesses, and Mysteries each character would like to investigate. It's pretty simple stuff, and the various mechanics lean toward creating a reasonably fleshed-out, competent character that has a lot of things to do.

Characters can also have Potential, basically points that are spent to make raising Skills easier. The Lead starts with a lot of Potential but very little actual Skill.

Chapter Four is more detail about how Trials, aka conflicts, are handled. It lets you know what happens when you fail a Trial: You gain an Infirmity that's decided upon by the player (not the GM), but at a level determined by the dice, reducing a particular Aptitude (the Talent half, specifically, reducing the number of dice rolled). If your Talent for an Aptitude is negative, you're Crippled and cannot engage in Trials or do normal things. A Crippled Questor can be Abandoned, and replaced with a new character, or he must be healed in order to go on.

There are also rules on Shielding -- stepping in harm's way when someone else messes up -- as well as rules for various group Trials. Very notable is a large, expanded section on how to handle the way Trials are narrated.

Chapter Five is about Narrative Points, which let the players make GM-style Statements about the game world, even outside a Trial. Depending on how sweeping and/or useful to the Questors the Statement is, it can cost more or less Narrative Points (NPs).

Secondary Questors start with Narrative Points, while the Lead does not, and everyone gets a NP every real-time hour of play. Also, you can earn 1 NP by adding a complication to a Trial and turning the narration of that Trial over to someone else. In addition, you can invoke your Questor's Weakness to cause him harm, earning NPs in the process. Finally, like traditional XP, the GM can hand out NPs are he chooses.

Chapter Six involves two very important things: Virtue and Wisdom. Virtue is gained when a Questor does a good deed according to the Virtue concept determined at the start of the game, rolling a number of dice determined by the GM (according to how good the act was) with a target determined by the GM depending on how much the Questor suffered in the act of Virtue. Every success is a point of Virtue. Virtue points are used to raise Skills, either permanently or temporarily; the cost of a permanent increase is cheap if you also spend Potential and expensive otherwise. Also, Virtue Points are used in Epiphanies.

Epiphanies are initiated with NPs, setting up a moment of enlightenment for the character. During an Epiphany, a player can reduce any of his Questor's Infirmities by spending one Virtue point per Infirmity level, or he can trade Virtue for Wisdom, or both.

Wisdom can also be gained by solving a particular character's Mysteries. Wisdom is important when encountering the Grail (see below), or the character can Regress, falling out of Wisdom, losing Wisdom points but gaining NPs in the process.

Chapter Seven is on Relics. "Relics are items of power and meaning that are sought out just like the Grail. They're less powerful but will help the Questors in their larger mission."

Relics normally relieve Infirmity, bolster Aptitudes, or grant a Questor an entirely new ability that he didn't have before. Relics can never affect Virtue or Wisdom, nor can they permanently affect Aptitudes or Infirmities, but otherwise they can be quite powerful.

Relics of a certain level require a certain amount of Wisdom in order to be found, and some agency, perhaps even the Relic itself if it is somehow intelligent, will judge the characters to see if they're worthy on it. Once gained, the Relic demands the character wielding it to have a certain level of Wisdom, and there might be other requirements and limitations as well.

Like everything else in the game, Relics seem constrained but they're actually quite flexible. A Relic could be a magic sword, but it could just as easily be a secret martial arts technique or even a person.

My main quibble with the game is the Relics section is a little vague. This is intentional, as Relics are supposed to be flexible, but given how concrete the mechanics are for everything else, even if a lot of detail is left up to the group, Relics stick out as having a little more "hand waving" than the other mechanics.

It's a small quibble: There are several examples, and the rules are certainly quite usable, especially if you don't stray too far outside the example powers. And since the system is optional, I find it easy to forgive.

Chapter Eight at last covers the Grail.

There are three requirements that must be filled before attaining the Grail. First and most obviously, the characters must reach the location of the Grail as part of the plot. Second, the Lead's Wisdom must have reached a certain point, determined ahead of time. Finally, the Lead must have used most of his Potential (i.e. have 5 or less points of Potential left).

Also, don't think the Lead's role is writ in stone. If the Lead dies or is otherwise removed from the game, there are rules here for a Supporting Questor to take up the mantle.

This is the interesting bit, however: The Lead must attempt to gain the Grail alone, but the special Trials involved involve the players, if not the characters, of the Supporting Questors. When the Grail finally appears, the GM describes it and the surrounding scene in rough terms; each of the SQs' players makes a single Statement, elaborating on what the GM said, and can spend NPs to say more.

The section has detailed rules for the final, unusual Trials the Lead faces. Again, the players of the Supporting Questors are involved. There is a Master Difficulty, determined beforehand, for attaining the Grail -- successes that must be obtained by the Lead. This Master Difficulty gets divided up into several Trials by the Supporting Questors' players, using Wisdom.

By default, there is only one Trial, of the Master Difficulty; the SQ players spend Wisdom from that gained by the group to reduce the Difficulty, holding that Difficulty for another Trial, and whatever is left over is the difficulty of the first Trial, with whatever was held back going into another Trial which can then be split in the same way by spending Wisdom. (It's less complicated than it sounds; the author explains it better than I have time to in this review.)

Regardless, the point is, the more Wisdom everyone earned, the easier it is to break the attempt to gain the Grail into small, low-Difficulty Trials that are easy for the Lead to "digest", as it were. While the Lead attempts to get the Grail alone, the Wisdom of the group as a whole aids him. Each of these small Trials are defined by four small Statements. The SQs' players can choose to make any or all of these Statements by spending one NP per Statement, with any they don't purchase will being made by the GM, who is encouraged to be quite adversarial at this point.

After the Trials are defined, the Lead sort of "runs the Gauntlet" of Trials, using Virtue to boost his Skills and Wisdom to roll extra dice. If he fails at the Trials, the Grail disappears, and the group can either continue questing after everyone takes a Wisdom hit, or they can turn the game into a tragedy, with the GM narrating the sad end of the King and the Land without the Grail.

Obviously, there is a big narrative reward for success. The Lead's player narrates the immediate victory, and then every participant takes a turn narrating the larger consequences of success, healing the King and the Land. Also, each player describes what happens to his Questor after the mission is over, and other loose ends are tied up using a similar round-robin of narration. The campaign then ends.

But that isn't the end of the book! Chapter Nine is titled "Techniques", and gives solid advice for participating in the game, both as a GM and a player, and how to blur the lines between GM and player for greater enjoyment. Unlike most such chapters in RPGs, this chapter is short and to the point.

There follows a section on Sample Set-Ups, giving settings and their attendant quests. One setting involves the characters as Dragons trying to rediscover the fading spark of life of their race (their "Fyre") before they all die out, another is "the hard-line Christian variant of the standard knights-in-shining-armor concept" complete with a literal Grail, and the last involves "a slightly futuristic, Orwellian alternate reality" with the PCs as secret police, questing to find a particular "traitor" in a quest that will cause them to abandon their hardness and their government in favor of the Virtue of humanity and sympathy. The sample settings, combined with the unconnected examples that appear in all the previous chapters, give a good sense of the many different kind of games possible with the ruleset.

Finally, the book ends with a short but quite functional index.

All in all, Trials of the Grail is like a carefully polished, sharp blade: It performs its functions well, in a straightforward manner, with style. It's the perfect engine to hang a campaign on if you want a detailed, interesting story with a distinct beginning, middle, and end, with mechanics that actively make the story easier to tell rather than getting in the way or feeling the need to fade into the background.