# The Division TTRPG: Wait Wat? tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/the-division Do you ever find things falling into your feeds and wonder how it is they've avoided catching your eye before now? Because I'm fairly plugged into the tabletop RPG world and the video game world, this just sort of snuck out there. The first thing I've seen of it is Rob Thaumivore doing a rundown of the Quickstart. I'm talking about *[[The Division Quickstart|The Division]]*, based on the video game, unsurprisingly.  Now, at first glance, this actually does seem like a pretty good IP to build a tabletop RPG on. It's small groups of operators engaging in some stealthy shenanigans in largely urban environments. There's a fair amount of good old-fashioned kinetic shooting that you can get into. There's the saving the world angle, which, as I understand it, some people are really into. Yeah, okay, I can see this making for a pretty good tabletop RPG experience. But then I look at the actual publisher and see that it's not coming from a recognized RPG production house. Instead, it's coming from *Arkhane Asylum Publishing*, which is a French company which is almost entirely known for doing French translated releases of already established properties. I have to be honest, this doesn't bode well, but I'm willing to give things a good chance, so I settled in to listen to Rob's take on things. And I started pulling up my tabs in the background so that I can make good judgments. So let's talk about some of that. There are some pretty cool bits. For instance, this seems to be a surprisingly rules-light approach to tackling the division. A dice pool of d10s from which the player doesn't necessarily just take the highest when looking for a target number, but chooses which to take. That's fair. A little weird, but fair. I like the fact that it requires no addition or subtraction most of the time, but is a straight comparison of whichever die value you pick to the target number. I truly appreciate the fact that this has become mainstream in design. Excellent. There are only 12 skills, and despite the fact that I generally hate skill systems, I'm willing to accept their very existence from time to time. I can see how this is going to work. The injury system is not particularly exciting, though rolling to see if you pick up a trauma or just shake it off when you run out of health might strike some people as too lightweight, but given that I come from the PBTA side of the world a lot these days, it's tolerable. Nothing really jumps out at me as horrifically offensive. The emotional bonds/drives/vow system clearly is in my wheelhouse, and I'm here for it, even though they don't actually detail it in the quickstart. Overall, this is a pretty reasonable game design. If anything, it's maybe a little **too** reasonable for *The Division* as an IP. I fully expected it to have a bit more crunch and sizzle, not to put too fine a point on it. Something a little more tactical, even though they suggest that you play out your games on a hex map because of the obviously necessary quantization in difficulty numbers. You're not going to end up with a pile of modifiers on any particular check. You're going to have individual tactical maneuvers, though those aren't particularly broadly documented in the quickstart either. I don't see much wrong here. Looks like it could be a good time. In fact, this is safe and sane enough that I'm vaguely curious why they just didn't make it a *Powered by the Apocalypse* or *Forged in the Dark* game to leverage the already existing fanbase of those mechanical systems. Playbooks for the various kinds of operators and lists of moves that they can open up and use would seem to fit right in with this sort of design. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. So I pop over to the Kickstarter page… and there it is. ![[The Division Quickstart - Entry Booklets (illo).jpg]] Oh, there it is. **That's** why my spidey senses were tingling. What they want to sell you for about $48 US is essentially a box of the quickstart, the one that you can have for free in your hot little hands. It comes with a set of dice and maps and tokens, but it's nearly $50 for a sampler. Let's say that you really want to play this game though, and you know that you're going to have to be the one to run it, like always. You're the one that buys games and brings it to the table, and nobody else buys a book until after you've proven that it's worth spending the time on, and everyone's going to like it. So what's the entry level for you to pick up the *Agent's Manual* (Player's Guide), *Coordinator's Guide* (GM's Guide), *Coordinator's Screen*, and the *Agent's Deck of Cards*, which are really just useful for tracking status and info on weapons and the like? How much would you expect to drop on that? Is it $153? ![[The Division Quickstart - GM Bundle (illo).jpg]] Now I know what you're saying to yourself right now: > Surely, Alex, that's not the minimum investment for a GM. There's got to be a PDF release that's pure digital that's going to come in at $40 perhaps? Maybe even less? I know it's a licensed property, but surely it can't play out like that. Well, newsflash, that literally is the baseline to get in the game if you want to be able to GM it. It's all uphill from there. There is no PDF release. There is no pure digital. Hell, if all you're interested in is being a good player and having the stuff that is entry level for that, you're talking about $65, which has the Agent's Manual and the Agent's Deck. And of course, it does come *with* a PDF, as the Coordinator Bundle does, but there's not a single pure PDF release tier in this entire thing. You're going to be spending a bare minimum of $135 to play this game as it stands now. That is fucking insanity. **Pure fucking hubris**, in fact. I don't think there are enough strong curse words for me to use right now to address my immediate visceral reaction. I feel like these guys may have gone to the graveyard, dug up my mother, and slapped her corpse. Actually, no, that would be considerably more entertaining than what they have put in front of me. The thing that really catches me is that there are plenty of other game systems that you could use if you were really interested in doing *The Division* on the tabletop. More appropriate ones, given the expectations of the actual video game IP. Let's run down a few: - *[[Twilight 2000]]*. In a sense, this is the **obvious** game system to use for *The Division*. It has all of the military and paramilitary crunch of a pretty effective wargame, as well as significant support for roleplaying skills and rebuilding civilization. Why Ubisoft didn't actually go to Free League and commission somebody to write the *Directive* using that system completely eludes me. Actually, no, it **doesn't** elude me. Ubisoft is a French company. They were trying to do something with one of the handful of French tabletop RPG companies to keep it close to home. I get it. My suspicion is that Ubisoft is why we're looking at absolute insanity when it comes to this pricing and an absence of pure digital releases because they just aren't that smart. How much work would it take to make a *Twilight 2000* hack of *The Division*? Probably a couple of weeks for someone who was a fan. It wouldn't be that rough. - *[[Scum and Villainy|Scum & Villainy]]*. Honestly, this is about as straightforward a low-complexity hack as you could possibly ask for. If you don't want to go with the crunchy militarism of *T2K* (though I can't imagine why you wouldn't, unless you're terrified that the video game normies can't deal with that much crunch when they come from a game which is all about managing combat complexity), then why not just lean into the Forged in the Dark mechanical simplicity? Instead of a ship, you put together mechanics for your **cell**. Your downtime activities don't have to change all that much and give you an excuse to hang out with and be involved with the neighborhood/community you're helping to rebuild up. Instead of standardizing on D10s, you standardize on D6s, which people, including normies, have more of. You even have core mechanics for long-term projects. You have easy assignment of what thing you do in the cell by putting together semi-structured playbooks. It's an obvious win and an obvious design choice. If you're afraid normies can't deal with the crunch, you give them more fiction. - *[[Five Parsecs From Home]]*. If you want the wargame nature of a lot of tactical engagement to mimic the actual video game, but the intricacies of *Twilight 2000* are just too intense (and I would accept that contention), then why not go to the other big player in indie tactical wargaming and ask Modiphus to help put together a game for *The Division*. This actually would have been my first stop if I were getting paid to put together this idea for someone. Ivan Sorensen managed to turn a really intense, funny, and largely theater of the mind RPG like *[[Paranoia - Five Clones From Alpha Complex|Paranoia: Five Clones From Alpha Complex]]* into a fantastic tactical exercise that manages to keep the style and theme of the original IP, something more serious and tactical like *The Division* should be a no-brainer. You keep the mechanics simple and straightforward. You focus on tabletop gameplay so that you can sell miniatures and maps and other bits and bobs, not just today but for the next several years. You can release content expansions and scenarios and adventures which focus on urban and rural areas and issue maps to go along with them. It's a money-making machine given the fanbase for the original video game. I don't think they're really interested in a game that focuses on and allows for exploration and community building. I think they really want to shoot dudes in the head to comment on their fashion choices and puffy jackets. If you're looking to make a whole bunch of money off of selling bits and bobs to an audience, tactical miniature wargaming is the place. Now, I want to be clear. I'm **not** criticizing their choices in their game design, oddly enough. That's usually my bit. I'm generally looking at traditionally architected games and saying, *"you know, this could be a lot better if it actually took into account the fiction of the characters and giving the players more agency."* I feel weird because that's pointedly **not** what I'm doing here. I don't mind the system at all. I think it has a lot of potential. It wouldn't necessarily be exactly what I chose, but I understand it. I get it. No, my objection here is not to the system, but to the marketing, the presentation, the cost. This is a ridiculously expensive game, and only true diehard *Division* players will want to throw down that much money—and I don't think even the most hardcore are going to want to throw down that much money on a type of game that doesn't even cater specifically to what the video game is like. I don't get it. The last time I was this annoyed by looking at what a publishing company did as regards its complete obliviousness in relation to digital distribution, well that too was a bit of a rant. From my [[12 - Elder Mythos|Character Creation Challenge Elder Mythos post]]: ![[12 - Elder Mythos#^4dde58]] ![[12 - Elder Mythos#^8a64af]] I have strong feelings about this sort of thing. Am I curious about *The Division* RPG? I'm curious. Am I likely to throw $153 at them for it? Not a chance in Hell. Not on your life. Not on anyone's life. That's a ridiculous amount of money for an untested RPG from a publisher which doesn't have a track record of producing anything but translations for other companies. Just not going to happen. That saddens me in a way, but here we are. As always, **caveat emptor**.