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Follow
Follow is a game where you sit down with your friends and play characters working together to achieve a common goal: your quest.
The quest you pick decides the kind of game you'll play. You could start a rebellion, cure a disease, slay a dragon (or a cat), or get your candidate elected. If it's something people can work together to accomplish, it could be a quest.
Will your characters stay united or will their differences tear them apart? Will they triumph or will their hopes go up in flames?
Follow is designed to be a reliable tool in your arsenal, a game you can whip out and play at a moment's notice. Robbins designed it because it's the game he wanted to have in my bag when he showed up to play, something he could play over and over again with a whole range of people.
Follow is also designed to be easy to learn and easy to play. It has no game master and nothing to prepare. All the steps are clearly and carefully laid out so, even if you've never seen a role-playing game before, if you have some people and some time, you're ready to play.
The quest you pick decides the kind of game you'll play. You could start a rebellion, cure a disease, slay a dragon (or a cat), or get your candidate elected. If it's something people can work together to accomplish, it could be a quest.
Will your characters stay united or will their differences tear them apart? Will they triumph or will their hopes go up in flames?
Follow is designed to be a reliable tool in your arsenal, a game you can whip out and play at a moment's notice. Robbins designed it because it's the game he wanted to have in my bag when he showed up to play, something he could play over and over again with a whole range of people.
Follow is also designed to be easy to learn and easy to play. It has no game master and nothing to prepare. All the steps are clearly and carefully laid out so, even if you've never seen a role-playing game before, if you have some people and some time, you're ready to play.
- GenresRole Playing Games
92 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2017
51 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 15, 2017
Robbins' newest RPG is definitely in the Fiasco family, except this one is about quests of all sorts. It's simpler than Robbins' other works, but accomplishes that goal well, resulting in a story game that's easy to learn and easy to play. Unlike his other games, it's also got a random mechanism to drive things to success or failure, which is a nice variant.
Beyond that, I should give it a play some time to learn more.
Beyond that, I should give it a play some time to learn more.
May 22, 2021
Un libro muy bien presentado y estructurado que presenta un sistema para jugar partidas de rol, independientes y sin narrador, de un grupo colaborando para cumplir una meta.
El libro incluye multitud de escenarios, listos para jugar, siempre de forma improvisada. Algunos de estos muy interesantes y muy poco explotados. Las mecánicas, son interesantes y posiblemente funcionen de forma acertada. Un gran libro para tener en el arsenal de herramientas.
El libro incluye multitud de escenarios, listos para jugar, siempre de forma improvisada. Algunos de estos muy interesantes y muy poco explotados. Las mecánicas, son interesantes y posiblemente funcionen de forma acertada. Un gran libro para tener en el arsenal de herramientas.
October 2, 2021
The weakest of the bunch, amongst the other works of author.
Feels like an RPG for the ones that lacks the imagination or hates the freedom of roleplaying, but it also lacks a carefully built setting, it is on a weird middle ground where it is actually a set of plot tables, while considering itself a ruleset.
I did not like it, and would not be trying this.
Feels like an RPG for the ones that lacks the imagination or hates the freedom of roleplaying, but it also lacks a carefully built setting, it is on a weird middle ground where it is actually a set of plot tables, while considering itself a ruleset.
I did not like it, and would not be trying this.
February 25, 2018
Follow is a neat GMless/GMful game that was created to fit a particular need:
“When I [Ben Robbins, game designer] started working on Follow, I had two goals. One was to make a very simple, accessible story game that anyone could pick up and play without a big learning curve. The other was to make a game you could whip out and play over and over again without feeling like you were retreading old ground—a trusty and reliable tool in your gaming arsenal” (87).
That is precisely what Robbins accomplished. Follow is quick to set up, easy to run, and has the ability to cover a wide range of stories, tones, and genres. Quite an impressive feat for a rule book that is under a 100 pages, only a quarter of which articulate the rules of the game.
If you are familiar with Fiasco, you will see a lot of echoes here, though in spirit more than in form. Robbins has taken the playset of Fiasco and replaced it with a single page “quest” that has all the information you need to create a situation with a driving need, characters with desires that feed into both the larger quest and their personal wants, a cast of secondary characters, and a three act structure that will keep the characters on task and on theme.
I haven’t played the game yet (though I should be soon), but you can tell from a quick read that setup is quick and easy and gets the players to the meat of the drama quickly and efficiently. The scenes themselves are all freeplay, like you see in Fiasco. There are no dice involved in how the scene itself plays out, and there is a nifty mechanic to keep players from making their characters’ lives too easy. Any player can create a complication when they feel like things went too smoothly by another player’s narration, and that complication has to take the form of another character being injured or endangered by the actions of the character the narrating player controls.
You can see that that mechanic will naturally cause friction between the characters, both the principal ones and the secondary one. Unlike Fiasco, the goal is not to lead to one big clusterfuck of betrayal and insane stupidity. Nevertheless, Follow wants to foster interactions between characters as the main source of narrative drama. For every act (or round of scenes) the players are not allowed to narrate the goal of the act being accomplished or failed, so all the scenes necessarily include the tasks that work toward accomplishment or failure and some pivotal exchange between the spotlighted character and one or two others. There are no rules for ways to keep those scenes from lagging or becoming flat—that’s all dependent on you as a roleplayer, both in the sense of how you play your character and how you construct your scenes.
The other feature I’m really excited about in the game are the presence of those secondary characters and the way the randomizer that occurs at the end of each Act to see if the goal was accomplished or failed (determined by drawing stones out of a cup) allows for character death, removal, and betrayal. Although the game is a relatively short one, played in one session, any given story can have an epic scope and include a trail of fallen comrades. Having that trail hardwired into the resolution mechanic for the scenes is an exciting way to do it. Players have the choice to kill off the minor characters, but when the time is right to slough off a main character, the game helps—encourages even!—you to do it. The player can then adopt a secondary character to step into the main character spotlight.
This is an exciting game design in its simplicity and directness, and I expect it will become exactly what Robbins hoped for: “a trusty and reliable tool” in my “gaming arsenal.”
“When I [Ben Robbins, game designer] started working on Follow, I had two goals. One was to make a very simple, accessible story game that anyone could pick up and play without a big learning curve. The other was to make a game you could whip out and play over and over again without feeling like you were retreading old ground—a trusty and reliable tool in your gaming arsenal” (87).
That is precisely what Robbins accomplished. Follow is quick to set up, easy to run, and has the ability to cover a wide range of stories, tones, and genres. Quite an impressive feat for a rule book that is under a 100 pages, only a quarter of which articulate the rules of the game.
If you are familiar with Fiasco, you will see a lot of echoes here, though in spirit more than in form. Robbins has taken the playset of Fiasco and replaced it with a single page “quest” that has all the information you need to create a situation with a driving need, characters with desires that feed into both the larger quest and their personal wants, a cast of secondary characters, and a three act structure that will keep the characters on task and on theme.
I haven’t played the game yet (though I should be soon), but you can tell from a quick read that setup is quick and easy and gets the players to the meat of the drama quickly and efficiently. The scenes themselves are all freeplay, like you see in Fiasco. There are no dice involved in how the scene itself plays out, and there is a nifty mechanic to keep players from making their characters’ lives too easy. Any player can create a complication when they feel like things went too smoothly by another player’s narration, and that complication has to take the form of another character being injured or endangered by the actions of the character the narrating player controls.
You can see that that mechanic will naturally cause friction between the characters, both the principal ones and the secondary one. Unlike Fiasco, the goal is not to lead to one big clusterfuck of betrayal and insane stupidity. Nevertheless, Follow wants to foster interactions between characters as the main source of narrative drama. For every act (or round of scenes) the players are not allowed to narrate the goal of the act being accomplished or failed, so all the scenes necessarily include the tasks that work toward accomplishment or failure and some pivotal exchange between the spotlighted character and one or two others. There are no rules for ways to keep those scenes from lagging or becoming flat—that’s all dependent on you as a roleplayer, both in the sense of how you play your character and how you construct your scenes.
The other feature I’m really excited about in the game are the presence of those secondary characters and the way the randomizer that occurs at the end of each Act to see if the goal was accomplished or failed (determined by drawing stones out of a cup) allows for character death, removal, and betrayal. Although the game is a relatively short one, played in one session, any given story can have an epic scope and include a trail of fallen comrades. Having that trail hardwired into the resolution mechanic for the scenes is an exciting way to do it. Players have the choice to kill off the minor characters, but when the time is right to slough off a main character, the game helps—encourages even!—you to do it. The player can then adopt a secondary character to step into the main character spotlight.
This is an exciting game design in its simplicity and directness, and I expect it will become exactly what Robbins hoped for: “a trusty and reliable tool” in my “gaming arsenal.”
January 1, 2018
I grabbed this because I'm a fan of the author's earlier game Microscope. I haven't played this yet, but it looks like an interesting indie game, easy enough to spontaneously play (i.e., without any advance prep) by any reasonable-sized group.
I'm looking forward to a chance to give it a run, and see if it's as interesting as it looks.
I'm looking forward to a chance to give it a run, and see if it's as interesting as it looks.
September 17, 2017
Fascinating, and from the looks of it, well up to the standard set by Microscope. Can't wait to give it a try.
January 2, 2021
Very cool and inventive game.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews