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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/23/tabletop-review-castles
-and-crusades-river-walk/
River Walk is the third episode of Troll Lord Games “weekly” adventure series known as “Adventures on the Powder River.” I put weekly in quotations because, although it is supposed to be a weekly release, it’s been more like a fortnight. To the Damenheit Bridge was released on June 15th and Thorns for Beer was released on June 28th. Three weeks and a day later, River Walk has finally been released. Let’s hope that the time between episodes starts to shorten up instead of spreading out even further. Otherwise, it’ll be September before we get the next installment, entitled Shingles of Gold.
If you’re new to the “Adventures on the Powder River” series, these are short, six to eleven page mini-adventures, meant to be played in a single session. They can be played separately or as one big adventure. At only ninety-nine cents per section, that’s not a bad price, especially as the content has been pretty decent so far. River Walk is written as if the DM and players have just finished up Thorns For Beer, however, so if you HAVEN’T, the DM will have to do a bit of restructuring of both the events and flow. Of course, you can always pick up Thorns for Beer as well, since it’s less than a dollar. I don’t know about you, but generally, when I see a “#3″ on a cover, it makes me want to start with (or at least read) the first adventure in the series.
When Thorns For Beer ended, the characters might have been given a task by a Fey that involves getting a small frog statue from a giant. In River Walk, you’re actually given the stats for the giant (actually a Cyclops), along with a second quest that has you charged with dispatched with the one-eyed menace – this one coming from the townspeople of Willowbreak shortly after the events of Thorns For Beer. On one hand, I’m glad they provided a second hook for this quest, but there are three big problems. The first is that the second hook assumes you have accomplished most of the main goal of Thorns For Beer but haven’t reached the ending. This makes no sense to me, as by the time that adventure is done, you’ll have left the village and confronted the fey, who then sends you to attack the Cyclops in this adventure. To get this second quest, characters would have to have backtracked to Willowbrook or had their DM tie the pieces together before encountering the fey. This second option is an impossibility because it ignores the fact that the “Powder River” series is meant to be episodic. The second problem is that most gaming troupes will have already had their DM make up stats for the giant and run the battle against it because River Walk is a month late. Even the most ardent C&C fan isn’t going to want to wait that long for their next gaming fix. Finally, River Walk doesn’t feel like it works as a standalone piece at all, mainly because it ties in so heavily to Thorns For Beer. Although the content here is good, the point of this series is that these short adventures work as one-shots as well as a concurrent series, and River Walk fails big time in that regard.
As a sequel to Thorns For Beer though, River Walk does a decent job. You get to continue the previous story, including a very detailed encounter with the Cyclops on the Powder River in some rapids. It’s a neat idea for a battle, and it’s a lot of fun to see players try to figure out how to navigate both unfamiliar terrain and fight a giant at the same time. The entire conflict takes up two pages of the seven page adventure, so expect this to be the bulk of the experience here. Aside from random encounters, you can probably play through River Walk in an hour – maybe two tops. That might sound exceedingly short, but remember, this is meant to be a very quick one shot.
So with two pages devoted to the Cyclops encounter, one page for the cover art and another for legal mumbo jumbo text, that still leaves us with three pages of content. In those three pages you get setup for the battle with the Cyclops, a map of the area, a nice amount of background information on the Powder River, two random encounter tables (one for on the water itself and one for when you’re on the banks/forest of the river) and a third of a page talking about the different ways to traverse the Powder River and the difficulties that can come with each. As always, I’m impressed with the sheer amount of DM-only content Troll Lord Games is able to pack into these mini-adventures, as you get everything you need to successfully run the adventure… and then some.
All in all, I give this a tentative thumb’s up. River Walk really doesn’t work as a stand-alone, but it’s a nice addition to Thorns For Beer. I can’t recommend purchasing this unless you have Thorns For Beer, but that ends up only being a two dollar purchase, so it’s not like it will break someone’s wallet to pick up both. River Walk is definitely the shortest in the “Powder River” series in terms of playable content, and it’s also the shallowest so far. The fact that two of the five pages of content are taken up by random encounter tables lets you know that Troll Lord really had to pad this particular episode. Definitely pick this up if you’re planning on playing or reading the full “Powder River” series, but so far, the only must get for any Castles & Crusades fan is the Thorns For Beer chapter.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/23/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-used-car-lot/
Used Car Lot is a Shadowrun supplement, in the same vein as Parabotany or the Gun Heaven series, in which you are given a collection of in-game stats for a variety of items. In the case of Parabotany, we saw magical plants of all kinds. In the case of Used Car Lot, we’re getting thirty vehicles that can be used in your game. Mileage with a product like this will vary (no pun intended) as it all depends on if you really need an eight dollar book containing nothing but vehicle stats. Personally, it’s not something I would ever need, but some GM’s have neither the time nor ability to think up new vehicles, so there is a definite audience for this product – it’s just not for me. Especially with that eight dollar price tag. Parabotany had the same price tag, but was seventeen pages longer, and as flora isn’t something the average GM thinks of, it was a far more interesting and useful product.
As with nearly all Shadowrun products, Used Car Lot is written form the point of view of JackPoint, a Matrix based chatroom of sorts geared towards the most elite Shadowrunners out there. With each vehicle’s stats, you are given commentary by runners. Generally it’s about the vehicle in question, but there may also be some conversation or a snide remark snuck in there as well. The in-game commentary is definitely the highlight here.
Oddly enough, the supplement is divided into two sections: one for North American vehicles and one for those found elsewhere. This seemed strange to me at first, because I would have assumed that in 2070, especially with corporations having more control of the world than governments (although we could say this is already the case IRL…), there wouldn’t be closed borders to certain vehicles like there are now. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, as four of the vehicles appear to be Eurasian only.
That’s pretty much all there is to Used Car Lot. There’s just not a lot of substance to this piece. Half of each page is mediocre artwork followed by one to two paragraphs about the vehicle in question and then a stat block. That’s really skimpy, especially for the price tag and page count. CGL could have done a lot more with the concept. Unfortunately, what’s here doesn’t justify the price tag. Again, if you’re incapable of designing vehicles yourself and/or you don’t want to use ones in the core rulebook, Used Car Lot might serve a purpose, but otherwise this is an easy supplement to pass up. Below is a list of vehicles contained within the supplement in question.
Thundercloud Pinto (Motorcycle)
BMW Blitzen 2050 (Motorcycle)
Honda Viking (Motorcycle)
Entertainment SYS Papoose (Motorcycle)
Yamaha Rapier(Motorcycle)
Rolls Royce Phantom (Limo)
Ford Canada Bison (RV)
Rolls Royce Prairie Cat (RV)
Lockheed-Chenowth Light Strike Vehicle (Dune Buggie)
Ford Americar (Sedan)
Toyota Elite (Sedan)
Gaz-Willis Nomad (Truck)
Land Rover Model 2046 (Land Rover)
Nissan-Holden Brumley (SUV)
Honda-GM 3220 (Sports Car)
Saab Dynamit 778 TI (Sports Car)
Leyland-Zil Tsarina (Sub-Compact)
Mitsubishi Runabout (Sub-Compact)
Volkswagen Elektro (Sub-Compact)
Conestoga Trailblazer (Semi)
GMC 4201 Series (Transport Vehicle)
Ares Mobmaster (Armoured Personal Carrier)
Doc Wagon Citymaster (Ambulance)
Leyland-Rover Transport (Van)
Renault-Fiat Eurovan (Van)
Volkswagen Supercombi III (Van)
BMW Trollhammer (Motorcycle)
Eurocar President (Limo)
Volkswagen Lingus (Station Wagon)
Scania VM 42 (Heavy Transport)
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/13/tabletop-review-kobold-
quarterly-22/
I’ve always loved RPG magazines. I rarely played D&D but I had a subscription to both Dungeon and Dragon for almost their entire run. I pick up The Unspeakable Oath whenever it actually comes out and I even enjoy flipping through the odd White Dwarf even though I’ve never played Warhammer. As a journalist and a gamer, I guess I just like articles on gaming. However, I often forget to pick up Kobold Quarterly. This is for three reasons. The first is that as it is quarterly, it often slips my mind. The second is that I don’t play Pathfinder (and I only know two people that do), so many of the articles aren’t of use to me even though I would probably enjoy reading them. The third is think I’m still burned from the fact that when Open Design makes a bad product, it is almost terrible beyond words. The Red Eye of Azathoth was one of the worst adventures for Call of Cthulhu I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading for example. It was so god awful that I actually swore off Open Design products for some time. It was THAT bad. However, I picked up Kobold Quarterly #21 in the spring to read and I found it to be fun for what it was, so here I am with my second issue of KQ in a row (It’s been a long time since that happened). Is Kobold Quarterly #22 worth picking up? Let’s find out.
The first two things you will notice about Kobold Quarterly #22 are unfortunately negative ones. They are the sticker price and the insane amount of ads in the magazine. Nine bucks for an eighty-four page magazine is a bit pricey, but six dollars for the PDF form is almost borderline insane, especially when you compare what else you can get for that amount of money off of sites like RPGNow.com or DriveThruRPG. The second issue I had with the magazine is the sheer plethora of ads. Out of eighty-four pages, which includes the cover, a whopping TWENTY-SEVEN pages are ads. That’s nearly a full third of the magazine. I could understand the cover price if this was ad free because there are a lot of writers (some with very big names) to pay, but that many ads plus the cover price? That’s just unacceptable to me.
Thankfully the content of the magazine is pretty decent. It’s almost all Pathfinder, but that’s not by choice. In fact the first piece of content in the magazine (found after three full pages of ads and the table of contents) is an editorial about how non-Pathfinder articles are drying up and that they’d like to have more. At least they’re addressing the spread issue. After all, the old White Wolf Magazine covered more than V:TM and Open Design is trying to which is something I greatly respect. Now let’s do a quick look at the articles.
Barbatos: Gatekeeper of Golarion’s Hells. This was a great first article to start off with and I especially liked the artwork, even though Barbatos looks like a cross between Cthulhu and a D&D Druid. It’s a fun look at one of the most powerful sources of evil in the Pathfinder universe. My only complaint is Barbatos is listed as Lawful Evil but the description of him is clearly Chaotic Evil. I did like that the article ended with some new monsters and an avatar of Barbatos for players to encounter. 1 for 1.
Dragonkin: The Wheroti Empire’s Legions. This is an article for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons and gives players an option to replace the Dragonborn race with something somewhat similar, but with new racial powers, abilities and utilities. I know the magazine is hurting for D&D 4e articles, but I don’t see the point with replacing one race with something that’s 95% the same. The only time that has ever worked was Kenders for Halflings in Dragonlance. Decidely unimpressed here. 1 for 2.
Monsters of Morphoi: A Sneak Peak at Journeys to the West. If you read my tabletop reviews, than you probably know I review a lot of Castles & Crusades products. As such, I’m happy to see an article devoted to the system. This article converts a bit of Journeys to the West, a Kickstarter funded Pathfinder project to the C&C system. I’m not sure how smart or useful it is that they are doing articles converting the book to C&C before it’s actually out, but you do get four monsters to surprise your C&C players with. So checks and balances. There are no plans to do the whole JttW sourcebook with Castles & Crusades mechanics, so the article ends up feeling a bit nonsensical and useless. I appreciate that they did a C&C article, but it should be one fans of that system can probably get more use out of. 1 for 3.
Blood Brothers. This article is about a new Rogue archetype by the same name. It’s meant to be an homage to the tandem thieving duos of classic fantasy stories. Unfortunately they only really have one to go off of: Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. They try to use Gimli and Legolas as an example but I’m pretty sure one would be a warrior and the other a ranger – not two rogues. There are some interesting abilities to be gained from this quasi-class, but it just seems like it would be too much work to make it function properly in a game. What if one character loses a level (or more!) to energy drain? What if a player can’t make it to that week’s session and thus the other Blood Brother can’t use any of his abilities? What if one dies and can’t be resurrected? The whole concept sounds like a neat idea, but if it doesn’t actually work on paper, it’s definitely not going to work in practice. 1 for 4.
Game Theories: The GM’s Influence on Character. Monte Cook’s little essay is by far the best thing in this issue. There are two points that Monte is trying to make here and I agree with both of them. A character raised to 5th level from scratch is always more interesting and has a better backstory than one who starts at 5th level. The second point is that the best characters are co-raised by the player and GM. The character who works his way up from Level One gets story hooks, encounters, and life changing events from both the GM and player. Together, the two (and the other members of their gaming group) create a memorable character. This is an article well worth reading. It’s not worth the cover price by itself, but it’s a damn good read. 2 for 5.
The Escalation Die. This is basically a preview for the new system, The 13th Age. It’s a streamlined d20 system (according to the article). Instead of previewing the world or system as a whole, the writer of the article, Rob Heinsoo, instead gives you a specific mechanic and shows you how to apply it to other games. I thought that was a very clever way to introduce the concept of “the escalation die,” but the whole concept either falls apart completely or adds a whole new level of combat depending what game you are playing or how your friends engage in combat. Basically, you start the escalation die at 0 on the first round. The next round the die is at 1, the third round, the die is at 2 and so on. The die basically gives players a bonus to attack rolls based on what number is show, up to a maximum of 6. The idea behind this is that it mimics movies or books where the heroes start out getting hammered but come from behind to win. The problem is that most gamers will find this idea novel AT FIRST, but then quick grow sick of it. Not every battle should be an uphill struggle with a bonus for intestinal fortitude. Some battles need to be a cakewalk while others need to be nigh unwinnable and force the characters to retreat. Perhaps the concept will work better in The 13th Age but the whole concept just sounded stupid and gimmicky to me. Half the fun of combat in an RPG is that things are random and brutal to both sides. Look at first edition D&D and AD&D – the two games that have spawned a legion of OSR homages. I was further pessimistic about the concept with how Rob tried to shoehorn it into Pathfinder and other systems. It just left me cold. About the only system where it seems liked it might actually work was Fung Shui. Overall, it was an interesting article, but if anything, it convinced me NOT to pick up 13th Age, which is probably the opposite effect Rob was looking for. 2 for 6.
Elven Archer Magic. This is pretty cut and dry. It’s some new spells for the Elven Archer class in Pathfinder, which debuted in issue #20. I’m not sure why they needed an Elven Archer class to begin with, but the article itself provides some nice spells. There are twenty spells in all, from 1st to 4th level. It’s nicely done, it complements the class and it also provides info for druids, clerics, and rangers to use some of these as well. 3 for 7.
Howling Party: Total Party Kill or Total Buzz Kill?. This is my second favorite article in the issue. It talks about what to do when you do indeed have a Total Party Kill (everyone dies) situation along with the pros and cons of fudging your die rolls to keep PCs alive. I completely agree with the author that fudging dice rolls should be exceedingly rare as RPGs are as much about luck and the rolls you get as anything else. Otherwise it’d be a diceless game. My personal choice is not to fudge the roll but to on rare occasions fudge the result. For example, I once had a person new to Call of Cthulhu try to walk down a rickety old staircase in the dark with two loaded and primed sawed off shotguns. He botched his roll as badly as you could in the game and fell down the stairs. I gave him a luck roll to see if his guns went off and he failed that too. The resulting damage would have killed him and then some, but as it was his first CoC game and two characters were doctors with a high med score, I dropped him to 0 hit points and had him lose an arm. The player learned a valuable lesson about how different CoC is from hack and slash fantasy games and the character went on to live through several more adventures before retiring. The article gives you over a dozen things to do in a TPK situation, and all of them are excellent. Definitely worth reading. 4 for 8.
Weapons For a New Age: Three Black Powder Variants. This is basically a set of three guns (Arquebus, Musket, and Pistol) for the Dragon Age. You also get three new talents and two new magical items. It’s a cute little hodgepodge of things and although I don’t really play Age games all that much (I’d rather play Dragon Age the video game than Dragon Age the tabletop game), adding black powder to the fame adds a new level to combat. 5 for 9.
Kobold Diplomacy: What’s Right For the Game. This is an interview with Jason Bulmahn, Lead Designer for Pathfinder. It’s a little rambly and there isn’t here that we haven’t heard before. The interview basically ends up being a discussion on the history of Pathfinder. It reads more like a commercial than an interview and since the VAST majority of KQ readers are Pathfinder players, it’s a bit like preaching to the choir. Pass. 5 for 10.
From the Mines. This is a letter column for the magazine. These are always a joy and I’m glad to see KQ still prints mail. I’m especially impressed they printed the letter that takes them to task for the editing/typographical and spelling errors that the magazine has had for a while. I’m even more impressed that in answering the letter the staff admitted the magazine has had a few issues in terms of quality and that they will try to address it. 6 for 11.
Ask the Kobold. This is basically the old “Sage Advice” column from Dragon, albeit much shorter. This issue they look at what happens when a Druid and their companion animal split up. Not a real issue that will occur for many players, but it’s nice to highlight a very big rule gaffe like this. 7 for 12.
Hold ‘Em For Questioning. This is an odd little article that I enjoyed quite a bit. It looks at how different alignments engaging in questions captives as well as how said captives respond or deal with such a situation. It also contains seven d20 tables to use to see how NPC captives react when PCs put them in this situation. Tables probably aren’t needed as a good GM would roleplay through this instead of randomize, but still a fun article. 8 for 13.
Dwarven Magical Rings. The title says it all. This article contains fifteen new magical rings, all of which are made by Dwarves, to use in a Pathfinder campaign. I’m not sure why they included an emphasis on the rings being made by dwarves in the title, as they are all fairly generic and nowhere in the crafting requirements does it say they have to be made by dwarves. I can’t really say any of the rings interested me and I can’t see too many of them being used. Forgettable and generic. 8 for 14.
The Scaled Steamhall. The four pages of this article are devoted to a spa/bathhouse that offers some magical and powerful treatments for characters. I love that an old school grid based map was included, but the location, premise and the ability to purchase things like dragon mounts was way too over the top for me. This entire location feels like it was written for a Monty Haul campaign and I hate those. 8 for 15.
Book Reviews. Yuck. Not only could these two pages be put to better use, but the reviews are between three and five paragraphs long. That’s not a review – that’s a quick summation and of no benefit to readers or the product in question. Worse yet, if you are going to review novels for a magazine about role playing games, stick to novels about RPG settings. The reviews were little more than fanboy fapping rather than a critical analysis of the book and all of them had errors that shouldn’t have made it past even a young inexperienced editor. Ugh. 8 for 16.
A Pathfinder Society Guide to Varisia. This is a nice in-depth guide to a region playable in a Pathfinder game. There’s a ton of detail and nicely illustrated map to boot. I’d have liked it to be a little more in-depth, but there’s only so much you can do with three pages. 9 for 17.
The Void of Veles. This is a one page article at the tail end of the magazine talking about the Midgard setting. It’s very random and all over the place and as such, it’s hard to follow what the point of it is. It feels like Kobold Quarterly just had an extra page to will and so they threw a bit of rambling together and used it to close out the magazine. 9 for 18.
…and there we go. Only about the half the articles in this issue of Kobold Quarterly are worth your time. There are a few superb pieces in issue #22, but for the most part, unless you have a subscription or a free copy of the magazine, I’d pass. The quality of content just isn’t there, especially when you look at both the cover price and the fact a third of the magazine is ads. KQ could do better and definitely has in the past, but the team behind it seems to be stuck in a holding pattern of mediocrity. Thumbs in the middle here.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/12/tabletop-review-creatur
es-caverns-second-edition/
Creatures and Caverns is one of those things I picked up on a lark. I guess I just really liked the idea of one Peter Schweighofer refining and publishing the rules to a game he made as a little kid based completely on watching people play Dungeons & Dragons. I loved making up my own games as a kid and doing two different Transformers: Generation One RPGs (One with the Storyteller system and one with just a d10 and Tech Specs) is actually what got my foot in the door with WoTC, White Wolf, and Eden Studios. So I have a soft spot for games made as a kid and then refined.
Creatures & Caverns is only twenty-six pages long, but it’s extremely well done. It ends up being more a board game, miniatures, and pen and paper RPG crossbreed. It’s not quite similar to the old Dungon! game but I could definitely see comparisons to Dragon Strike or HeroQuest. Heck, even the old G.I. Joe board game from Hasbro where you could use the old figures instead of the pieces that came with the game is a decent comparison to this.
What I really like about Creatures & Caverns is that it’s exceptionally easy to play, making it a great gateway game for small children. You only need six sided dice and there are two character classes: knights and wizards. This means kids don’t have to contemplate min/maxing characters, races, skills, feats, and the rest. They can use swords, or they can use sorcery. Starting stats are set, but as the game goes on, you can customize your character by giving them more Hit Points, more spells, extra damage, or the ability to fend off attacks within a high roll range. Again, it’s pretty simple by most RPG standards, but for people just learning the basics of tabletop gaming, this is very easy to learn and still make the character into your own. One of the interesting things is that instead of spending experience points to improve your character, you spend either gold or Hit Points. More damage or defense in exchange for less health? This creates an interesting conundrum. Personally I’d get rid of gold before Hit Points, but it’s nice that there are two options for boosting a character’s abilities.
Gameplay is pretty simple. Someone designs a map on paper or uses one that already exists. Characters are marked with anything from miniatures to bits of paper (based on the scale of the map) and the entire experience is a pure hack and slash dungeon crawl. This is definitely more roll-playing than role-playing, which is fine as this is more a board game than anything else. Everything is turned based, with each player facing what each room has to offer in its entirety. Once that is done, win or lose, the next player gets their turn. At first glance, people used to playing pure tabletop RPGs might think, “Wow, that means there can be a long time between turns, especially with multiple people playing,” but in fact, things go pretty quickly. There’s not a lot of resource management or real tactical planning involved with Creatures & Caverns. It’s just dice rolling. Again, look at a board game like Dungeon!. It was the core of old school D&D turned into a 2d6 board game. Things work very similar here.
Combat is pretty simple. Each player or monster has a spread that allows them to hit. Starting characters hit on a roll of five or six for example. The defender can then roll to see if they parry. If successful, damage is reduced. Damage comes from armour first and once the armour’s Hit Points are gone, it begins to be taken directly from the character. Once at 0 Hit Points, the PC is dead. If the monster is killed, the PC gets to add the creature’s experience score to his or her hit point total. So if a PC is at 10 Hit Points and the XP score for a Large Dragon is 50, the PC’s Hit Points rises to 60. There is no Maximum Hit Point level either. Both adventures are simple but fun and remind me of some very early D&D adventures, where the emphasis was on killing and looting over storytelling.
The game comes with stats for thirteen different monsters and rules on how to design your own. It also gives a list of traps, treasures, and magical items. The book ends with two adventures, along with their game maps. The first adventure is meant to be a short introductory experience while the second is a lot longer. Both adventures give a comprehensive description of what is in each room, making them easily played by even the most inexperienced DM. Again, C&C2e is probably best left to newcomers or people using it to teach their kids and/or friends how to play a role-playing game. Gamers used to systems like GURPS or RIFTS might poo-poo the game for its simplicity while other gamers will probably embrace it for the same reason.
All in all, Creatures & Caverns is a wonderfully done, simply little boardgame/RPG mash-up that I think kids of ANY age could have a lot of fun with. It’s all the more impressive when you consider that the game is completely free of charge. So you might as well download a copy of this. At worst you got a free twenty-six page game you’ll never actually play. At best you’ll find something that you really enjoy playing with your kids or with people new to tabletop gaming. Either way, you’re sure to get your money’s worth.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/11/tabletop-review-random-
acts-of-horror/
Last year I reviewed an amusing little book called Random Acts of… Violence. It was an amusing, helpful, and easy to use book that offered a hundred random “acts” that a DM could use in a role playing game. A DM could simply pick one of the acts, or roll a percentile to get one at random. The idea was great, and it was obvious that we would see some more Random Acts in the future.
Random Acts of… Horror is the latest in this series. Instead of almost slapstick levels of physical comedy, Horror brings about a macabre change to the format. There are plenty of surprise zombie attacks, ghostly figures, and things that go bump in the night.
One thing I noticed immediately, mostly because the preface told me about it, was that things were often a bit more vague that usual. Shadowy figures surround sleeping PCs, but what’s revealed when the lights go on is pretty much up to the DM. The book goes with “horrors beyond all imagining”. It could be a group of demons getting ready to feast on your soul, or something like a troupe of goblins getting ready to put on a striptease. Clearly, the level of flexibility offers up all kinds of… possibilities.
Something interesting to note is that many of these acts allow you to test the alignments of characters. For example, “While visiting a small town, the PCs notice many devilish creatures trying to pass for townspeople.” A good player may go to investigate, while an evil character may gleefully join in on the shenanigans. Depending on the type of campaign your running, such a simple sentence could have some pretty neat ramifications.
Using the book is simple. There are a hundred different acts in the book. Each one has an associated number. If you want something random, merely roll percentile dice (2d10), and go from there. If you’re looking for an idea to jump start your campaign, you can simply pick one you like. With a hundred different options, the book can certainly come in handy. I don’t have too much experience running campaigns of my own, but I do know how difficult it can be coming up with ideas. This book can offer up useful starting points.
There are no stats given for anything in the book. That means its compatible with just about everything out there. It also means that users will likely have to do a bit of work after they’ve chosen an act. After all, if a hungry werewolf is going to attack the party, it’s going to need some stats. Still, I think the flexibility and utility makes up for the leg work.
At two dollars, this book is a fairly safe buy. It many only contain a list, but it’s a pretty good list. If you like, you can also purchase four books in the series as a bundle for six dollars. That’s a pretty sweet deal if you don’t already own one of them. If you’re looking for something to spice up your campaign, this is certainly worth a look
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Publisher Reply: |
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Thank you very much for the detailed review! |
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/04/tabletop-review-the-pla
ys-the-thing/
This game, as you might have guessed, is about putting on a play. One person is the Playwright (the GM), and everyone else is going to play one or more roles in whatever production the Playwright chooses. During the course of the game, players will choose actor types and roles, and then act out the play. Some gamers may know the name of the guy who edited the core book for this game: John Wick, known for Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea. So, I guess that’s cool.
Overview
Players start out by assigning six points to three attributes: Logos, or skill with words; Pathos, emotional depth and manipulation; and Ethos, understanding of time and place. Each of these attributes will be used by the player whenever they try to accomplish something that isn’t trivial. Together, the three attributes are referred to as Acting Chops. Next, players will choose a type of actor to be: The Lead, The Villain, etc. each with an onstage ability and an offstage ability. The Playwright will then cast the play through a sort of bidding mechanism where players will take a role or add bonuses to the role like props; which, I suppose, is some sort of bidding. I’m not entirely convinced.
The game uses (or at least borrows heavily from) the FATE system. In the game, each role has an “Invoke” and a “Compel”, the first being an effect that they can trigger, the latter being an effect triggered by others. Each of these meta-game actions costs Story Points, which are the currency people use to declare Invokes and Compels. Players can resist these extra influences, but it will cost them Story Points as well. Characters also have “Plots”, which are storyline-based reasons for changing the direction of the scene. Each character will be given some lines that they will get Story Points for using in the play, especially if they perform the line in keeping with the style of the play. In most plays there are props, and likewise in The Play’s The Thing, actors can use props which can appear in the play when needed, and add a bonus die for various activities like hiding or persuading.
A play is broken up into five acts according to the rules, although I’m sure this could be modified without hurting the game any. Each act takes place on a set, which will likely change with each act. The set itself is broken down into places, various areas “on stage” where the actors can be. Anyone familiar with being in plays or the theatre in general will know exactly what this is like. Actors can use places to give them bonuses, provided that it is appropriate.
Alright, so after you have established all of the facts about the characters and the play, you are ready to begin the first act. The Playwright sets the scene by narrating the set, adding at least two characters, and giving a synopsis of the act. As the act goes on, it may change from what the Playwright indicated by players using the aforementioned Compels and Invokes, edits, or just plain not doing what the Playwright said they would.
Once the show starts, players will have the opportunity to do all kinds of crazy things. First of all, you are basically just making up lines as you go (except if you’re using one the Playwright gave you) and deciding on the fly when you want to change something. Changes are referred to as “edits” in this game. When a player wants something to be different, they make an edit. Depending on how big the edit is that someone is trying to make (and whether the Playwright accepts the edit or not), they will try to roll above a fixed target number on all of the d6 that they can muster for that roll. If the edit is successful, it is resolved and the play goes on as though whatever the edit was is now fact.
That’s basically it! The rest of the book has a section on Playwrighting (and indeed play writing), as well a good 30 or so pages about scripts including several condensed versions of popular Shakespeare plays ready to be used for the game. The last section adds some new roles, a new script, and some other new stuff for a sort of advanced version of the game, which is attempting to emulate Shakespearean Romances.
What Do I Think?
I really like the concept of this game and the simplicity with which the mechanisms work. I am very glad to see it when role-playing games go in new directions instead of the same old Fantasy tropes, or Sci-fi, or Dystopia, or whatever. Plus, the game actually seems pretty darn fun. The only problem I see with this game is with people who really hate role-playing, or who just generally aren’t good at it. If you have a gaming group that loves to interact, laugh, act, make other people do what they want, and other such things, then I don’t see how this game could fail.
The Story Point system is a simple way to balance the power and control between the players and the playwright, and it lends a definite game aspect to this… well… game. It makes me wish more games had more game-like elements in them than the rolling of dice.
My only other problems just stem from some confusion while reading the book. For instance, characters have offstage skills, but I did not find a whole lot of information or examples about what players can do with their characters offstage. The descriptions seem to indicate that offstage abilities are just things you can do when you are not onstage acting. The actor types vs. the character roles in the play are also kind of confusing. If I’m a Villain, can I play Othello or is it just going to make the entire play kind of meaningless?
The book layout is well done, and there is fun and whimsical art throughout. While not an exhaustive set of rules, it gives enough structure for a Playwright to run the game confidently as long as everyone is willing to fly by the seat of their pants (which is a big part of the game!). I think it would be great with theatre people (theatre people know what I mean by this), and it might just be a hit with gamers who love social games and messing with things like Shakespeare’s plays. It’s a novel effort, a genuine game, and presented well. Not worth buying if you’re going to let it sit on the shelf, but definitely worth it even for only one night of entertainment with friends.
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Originally Published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/02/tabletop-review-castles
-crusades-thorns-for-beer/
Thorns for Beer is the second part of Troll Lord Games’ new series of inter-connected episodic adventures. It’s meant to be released weekly, although Thorns For Beer came out thirteen days after To the Damenheit Bridge, so perhaps it’s going to be bi-monthly now or even more spread out considering they changed the end from “The Overland Adventures Continues Next Week” to “The Overland Adventure Continues in the next Adventures on the Powder River…” Release dates can be pretty hard to ensure, be it tabletop OR video game, so perhaps TLG realized they bit off more than they can chew with a promise of weekly episodes.
The biggest change is that Troll Lord Games has added given these adventures an umbrella title of Adventures On the Powder River. This was completely absent from To the Damenheit Bridge so if/when people start searching for that collective title, they might not find the first part of the adventure. Odd that Troll Lord would give this a new “series” name after It has already started.
Thorns For Beer can be played as a stand-alone one shot or occurring immediately after To the Damenheit Bridge. Unlike the first adventure there isn’t a direct tie-in to a piece of Fat Dragons Game’s terrain for miniatures. FDG does get a quick plug on the DriveThruRPG ad RPGNow websites where Thorns for Beer is listed though.
Thorns For Beer may be only seven pages long, but it is entirely crammed full of content. This is all the more impressive when you realize the first two pages are a cover and a bunch of legal text. So a little under a dollar for five pages of content might seem a little much (Imagine how much a core rulebook would cost at that rate!), but you will DEFINITELY get your money’s worth here as Thorns For Bridge is well written, quite clever and sure to entertain your Castles & Crusades players when you run it for them. Also, it’s a page more than To the Damenheit Bridge so you’re getting slightly more bang for you not-quite-a-buck.
Thorns For Beer is designed for three to five mid-level characters. I thought that was a bit high in To the Damenheit Bridge, but it works here as you’ll need one or two spellcasters to accomplish your primary goal. You are given far more information about the sleepy little hamlet of Willowbrook (Population: Slightly over 300). It might seem odd that you are given a ton of demographics about the town (and that it has an 8th level Ranger in it!), but if the DM/GM/Keeper/Storyteller really likes the local, he has enough information to place several more adventures in the area. This foresight by Troll Lord lets C&C fans get even more use out of Thorns for Beer and I really appreciate that.
The crux of Thorns for Beer is that WIllowbrook’s only tavern has been cursed. It seems the proprietor of the local watering hole smarted off to someone (or something) that he shouldn’t have and now the tavern is shuttered. Mr. Greely and his sisters are nowhere to be found and the tavern itself is impossible to get into. Players will have to figure out how to get into the pub, find the Greely family and the cause of all this fuss, all of which will have players needing to use their heads instead of weapons and come up with creative solutions to save the day.
There isn’t any real combat in the adventure, although there are one optional place where you can slaughter something and a story seed that can pit players against a giant, but other than that, this is an adventure that puts aside dungeon crawling and hack and slash combat in favour of a pit of a puzzle and clever thinking. I really liked that. It’s an especially nice change of pace for Castles and Crusades whose published adventures tend to have a lot of battles and an overflow of magic items to where a NPC loaded up with magic weapons and armour is commonplace. Thorns For Beer is SO different from what Troll Lord Games puts out adventure-wise, that I couldn’t help but love it. I thought the story crux was quite innovative and this would be a blast to spring on players as a one night one shot or as a brief respite between larger and longer adventures.
If you’re a fan of Castles and Crusades at all, definitely pick up Thorns for Beer. It’s less than a dollar and you get an excellent short little adventure that can be played on its own or as a step in a much larger one. This is so much better than To the Damenheit Bridge and I can’t wait to see where this series goes from here. I was a bit pit out by the use of the same cover art as To the Damenheit Bridge and a few typos and grammatical errors that could be found (It’s only five pages of content!), but Thorns For Beer is still the best short adventure I’ve ever seen Troll Lord Games put out, and I’ve been a Castles and Crusades fan since first edition.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/28/tabletop-review-mermaid
-adventures/
Mermaid Adventures is a cute little RPG made specifically for bringing young children (and especially young girls) into the tabletop RPG fandom. It came into existence as a Kickstarter campaign. The game was very successful, drawing in nearly two hundred backers and more than doubling its original goal. This allowed Third Eye Games and the game’s creator, Eloy Lasanta, to add four new races and a few more adventures to the game. I wasn’t a backer personally for the game, but I did find it a very cute idea (and god knows we need to really get the younger generation involved in this hobby) so when I was offered a review copy of the game, I leapt at the chance.
Mermaid Adventures contains everything a group of players needs to play the game. The book’s rules are fairly simple, which is a plus for any game geared towards single-digit players, and there is a lot of advice for parents on how to run the game and even help their kids make characters if the point based system is too much for them. You will need a lot of dice though – at least ten of one colour and ten of another (the game suggests black and white), so expect World of Darkness size rolls, especially if you get to have a long running campaign. Rolls are basically contested. A character rolls their die pool, trying to get 4s, 5s, and 6s. Each of those is a success. Depending on the difficulty of the task at hand, they will also have to roll one or more black dice. If the successes on the white dice are greater than the black dice, the character succeeds. If there are more successes on the black dice, the character fails. A tie means a partial success. That’s really all there is to actually rolling in the game. It’s extremely simple and the rolls can be applied to anything from combat to putting together a puzzle. Kids will figure out the rules in no time and really be able to run through the game the same way long time tabletop vets have their favorite core rulebook memorized.
There are eight types of playable merfolk: Eelfolk, Fishfolk, Jellyfolk, Lobsterfolk, Octofolk, Rayfolk, Sharkfolk, and Urchinfolk. Like any RPG, each race has their own strengths and weaknesses although I suspect most kids will gravitate towards fishfolk since that’s what is primarily thought of when they hear the word “mermaid.” I can’t see too many people wanting to be sea urchins or jellyfish. I am glad to see a wide variety of sea creatures as it gives little children, who are prone to gender roles, a chance to play a game where they can be a tough rugged shark or a beautiful fishy princess like Ariel from The Little Mermaid. It’s telling that the biggest question Eloy got from the children who playtested the game was, “Do we have to play as girls?” due to the fact since time immemorial, merfolk have almost always been cast as female to the point of it being part of the unconscious collective.
There are only four attributes for kids to keep track of: Body, Mind, Charm (Charisma), and Luck. Attributes for PCs start with five assigned points based on their starting race. For example, a fishfolk has the following starting stats: Body 1, Mind 1, Charm 2, and Luck 1. Then the player gets five extra points to put into stats however they want, with a maximum of five. So a Fish folk could look like anything from Body 5, Mind 1, Charm 3, and Luck 1 to Body 2, Mind 3, Charm 3, Luck 2. There’s a lot of room for flexability which ensures a kid can have whatever type of character they want, from bookworm shark to an extremely strong Jellyfolk. Each starting race also has a free Quality to help it when rolling dice. A Fishfolk gains the free Quality of “Adventurous,” which lets it get an extra white die to roll when discovering something new while an Octofolk gains the Quality Tentacles, which gives them an extra die when trying to accomplish something quickly and yet correctly. Finally, the player then gets to pick a total of four other Qualities from a massive list of thirty regular and ten magic based Qualities. Magic Qualities can be taken freely, but you can never have more Magical Qualities than you do Luck. That’s all there is to character creation. Again, everything is simple, streamlined, and very easy for kids to learn.
The game contains several pages of NPC stats. You can use some of these as pregenerated characters and others as allies or enemies. There are also stat blocks for various aquatic life forms, both mundane and fantastical in nature.
The book ends with five full adventures for kids to play. It’s probably best that a parent acts as the Keeper (DM/GM/Etc) at first, but once kids know the rules pretty well, they can take turns running an adventure instead. The first adventure is “The Rescue” and has the merfolk trying to save the crew and passengers of a sinking ship, all while keeping their existence a secret. “The Queen’s Pearl” has the players finding well…the Queen’s missing pearl. “Undersea Olympics” has characters competing in several sports and is a nice example of how to do an adventure where characters aren’t fighting anything. It’s just good clean sports & fun. “Lost in Dark Tunnels” is the most mature adventure, giving the PCs the mission of trying to find a lost child. “Being Human” has the players wake up on a beach one morning, all magically transformed into humans. The merfolk must figure out how this happened (and why) and how to change back to their real forms. This last adventure is very open ended and should allow the Keeper to start coming up with a series of adventures to play off this one. It’s a nice selection of easy adventures that younger gamers will quickly learn the ins and outs of the system by playing through.
The art of Mermaid Adventures might be its weakest areas. It’s very cartoony and colourful, which I think kids will appreciate. However, because it’s not the typical art found in RPGs, I can see some adults brushing it aside as amateurish or cheesy. Of course, they are not the target audience in much the same way Archie Comics aren’t really written with a 40 year old male in mind. Although I’m not a child, nor do I have/want any of my own, this is definitely the sort of art that would have appealed to me as a young kid, but also something I’d have brushed off as “lame” when in my teens and fully into D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and other RPGs like that. As an adult now I think my feelings towards the art lie somewhere in the middle. Perhaps either quaint or charming would be proper descriptors.
All in all, Mermaid Adventures is a really cute rules lite system that I think a lot of small children can really have fun with. It’s not really something I can see older gamers or even tweens playing a lot of, as they’ll probably want something a little deeper. Still, it’s a wonderful little game to introduce children to the world of tabletop gaming, even if they don’t stick with it for too long. Do you know a budding young gamer who likes your tabletop miniatures but has no idea what you are doing with all those dice and words like “initiative” or phrases like “free action”? Then you might want to consider starting them off with Mermaid Adventures. As it’s only a ten dollar PDF, it won’t break the bank and it just might be the gateway towards your child developing a lifelong love of rolling dice, casting spells, and earning experience.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/25/tabletop-review-the-rif
ter-52/
This issue, as with #51, shows Palladium dealing with basically the same issues: the Rift MMORPG lawsuit, the movie, and some personal things with Kevin Siembieda. The meat of the issue consists of News, a huge article about Atlanteans, Sunaj, Nogs (new races?), and all kinds of tattoos (Rifts), a “Cannibal Magic” article (Fantasy), an article on rune (i.e. sentient/sapient) weapons (Fantasy), and then some fan fiction.
The Crusaders & The Black Crusade
This article takes up about half of the entire book! It starts off with about 8 pages containing two short stories that are quite evocative and well-written. They are mostly about battle, so I keep getting this Warhammer 40,000 vibe from a lot of the Rifts material I’m reading. Weapons, weapons, weapons, factions fighting for who knows what reason, but a good read nonetheless. Plus, they highlight things mentioned in the rest of the article.
First, after the fiction, a race called “Nogs” are introduced which some sort of low-intelligence human that look more like orcs. The “True Atlanteans” highlighted in the article are the race that use Nogs as slaves and give them these special, powerful tattoos (mentioned later). The Atlanteans are given some occupations (O.C.C.s) that seem rather social in their leanings: Dilettante, Drifter, Tattoo Master. Another sect of Atlanteans called the “Sunaj” are given several occupations that are almost exclusively related to combat: Assassin, Warrior Thrall, Slayer, Slaver. After some occupations we get some general gear for Atlanteans, and some specific stuff for the Sunaj, like the “’Black Ball’ E-Sphere” which is an energy weapon clip that can double as an energy grenade, as well as several suits of armor and accessories.
The Atlanteans are apparently very big on tattoos. All of the art that shows any skin shows tattoos covering it. This article gives TONS of new tattoos that grant all sorts of powers, from enhancing the power of weapons and deadliness of strikes to healing and detecting. One of the tattoos is a “Black Sphere (Sphere of Destruction)” that can vaporize anything it touches. Sphere of Negation anyone? Even more crazy than regular tattoos are “Flux Tattoos” which are supposed to be very rare and let you do things like summon a swarm of insects. Basically tattoos are like spells that are notated on the skin of the recipient.
Cannibal Magic
This is material for Palladium Fantasy RPG that details certain trolls that have special magical powers that are enhanced by er… eating their victims. After they have been basted with enchantment, preferably. I had to suppress a sigh as I read through the rules for the cooking, eating, and preservation of certain body parts and how things will simply not work right if such and such goes wrong (if the food is not completely eaten). Further sighs were required when I saw that there were eating times listed for body parts. Yes, there are rules for how long it takes to eat a particular body part. Ok, so I didn’t actually suppress any of the sighs.
The body parts will grant the Cannibal Mage different temporary powers depending on what is eaten. Have a liver? It will negate the effects of disease. Eating the appendix will prolong life…possibly forever. The article goes on to describe some more information about trolls and abilities, and then stats out the Cannibal Mage O.C.C.
Intelligent Weapons
This article contains more material for Palladium Fantasy RPG, but it is mostly focused on weapons. Not just any weapons though, we are talking sentient swords. Basically this article is about weapons that start out like low-level characters, and then over time become more and more powerful, just like a character. The article details several kinds of weapons that correspond with well-known character classes like a “Cleric R.C.C.”, “Elementalist R.C.C.” (druid or mage), or with certain alignments like the “Lightbringer R.C.C.” which is a weapon specifically for use against “supernatural evil”.
The second part of the article discusses weapons with personalities and gives them stats just like an NPC (or PC for that matter). One weapon even has multiple personalities, each with their own abilities and stats. The article finished with what is, in my plain outspoken opinion, a bunch of crap. The last part of the articles is an O.C.C. called “Weapons Expert”, adapted from Heroes Unlimited. “This character is an expert with virtually all aspects of weapons…” really now? Don’t we usually just call that a fighter? Anyway, besides this last bit the article has some cool ideas in it.
What Do I Think?
I liked this issue more than the previous one, but partly because I am just biased toward fantasy over sci-fi. Overall, the publication is still mostly just adding more gear and character classes, neither of which I am a huge fan of. What I find most disturbing is the complete absence of adventures. Is The Rifter actually about role-playing? Or is it just about killing stuff and being powerful? There are some cool ideas presented, don’t get me wrong, but it would be great if there was some material that provided an environment to use these ideas in.
The fiction is ok…but it just whets my appetite for an adventure. I don’t need pages and pages more of weapons and spells and classes and whatever, just about every major system has tons of source material and anybody who wants to can come up with their own brew of class or special weapon. What would be really great are some adventure ideas to help flesh out the Rifts world. I don’t even know how people who contribute to The Rifter might play the game, because all I am seeing is stuff. It would be nice to see some juicy module to balance all the crunchy stats, that’s all I’m saying.
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Originally Posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/22/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-sprawl-sites-north-america/
Maps and miniatures are two things that never spring to mind when I play or run Shadowrun. Sure I have a few Ral Partha Shadowrun minis lying around and I tried the terrible oversized figure game, but I’ve never felt that ANY incarnation of Shadowrun lent itself particularly well to miniatures or map based combat and considering I don’t know anyone that actually uses either very often, I think it’s safe to say I’m in the majority here.
So I found it a bit surprising when Catalyst Game Labs released Sprawl Sites: North AmericaL which is designed specifically for his sort of tabletop gaming. I was intrigued by the very concept by the attempt to revive the Sprawl Sites concept, which was last used in what, First Edition? Oy. What I found was a product with some nice ideas catering to a very niche market of Shadowrun players (those that actively used maps with players and/or minis) but that really needed to be retooled in several ways.
Sprawl Sites: North America is thirty-two pages long. You start with your nice cover art, while pages 2-16 go into detail about each of the eight locations presented with in. Pages 17-32 then give you the full colour maps to use with players. There are two versions of each map, one with legends and extra detailing for DMs and one without any of that for the players. The maps aren’t especially well done, although I might be spoiled from the various maps we’ve reviewed here at Diehard GameFAN. You’re going to really have to blow them up if you want to use them with miniatures, and as the maps aren’t all that detailed, players will be less than impressed. These maps look like they were done with Microsoft Visio or a generic RPG map maker from a decade or so ago. You’re also not given a scale for any of the maps, so when you’re printing them out at a larger size if you want to use any of them with miniatures, it’s going to be somewhat guess and check. I do need to emphatically point out that I don’t believe CGL made any of these maps with miniatures based play in mind but rather as schematics or floor plans, but then if that’s the case one would think they’d all look like the “Mall of the World” map. Who knows?
The best map of the lot is the City Hall one, while the “Mall of the World” is by far the worst. It’s like something you would see in an actually mall saying, “You are here.” It’s also very small for a mall – possibly one you’d see for a town of about 20,000 people. I was really disappointed by the quality of the maps and I honestly don’t think I’d use them with my players. I’d rather have the DM one for a reference guide if I was to use the location, or I’d give some bigger, better (and cheaper) maps already laid out for miniatures use. Of course, then I’d get strange looks and asked if I was needed a D&D Minis or Heroclix fix by my friends.
The flavor text in the first half of the supplement is the real reason to pick this up. Each of the eight locations had three sections of descriptive text to flesh out the area. The first is “Structure and Security,” which talks about the armor and structure rating of everything on the map along with any nodes, keylocks and commlinks. This is handy for when things start getting blown up or hacked by your players. A good DM will use this information when he describes the locale to his players in descriptive terms to help paint a mental picture. The second section is “Typical Occupants” and gives you an idea of what NPCs to expect and present to players. City Hall will have bureaucrats, the mall will have rent-a-cops and shoppers. The “No Tel Motel” will have things like hookers and drug dealers. So on and so forth. Both sections are very informative and will really help you to make the maps come to life if you choose to use them.
The final section is “Adventure Seeds” and it’s the best part of the supplement. Each location has between four and seven adventure seeds, each with a very different plot. You can re-use the maps as recurring locations in your campaign or just take one from each. The last adventure seed for each map is labeled with the phrase Frame Job in italics. The Frame Job adventures seeds are part of an interconnecting set that forms a full adventure for players, allowing the DM to get the full use out of the maps and the $10-20 spent on this supplement. Frame Job is a weird little story where a Mr. Johnson hires the players to fake a terrorist attack and have it blamed on a set of unsuspecting patsies. There isn’t a lot of substance here so the DM will have to make up the bulk of the adventure on their own, but that’s what adventure seeds are all about. The seeds and maps together can make a nice quick evening of play for those times when you don’t have a long adventure to throw at your players, or if you just don’t have much time to put something together. Each adventure seed can work as a nice hour or two of play, but a creative DM can stretch things out much longer. The key is to make sure it doesn’t come off as padding…
The one big problem with the adventure seeds for Frame Job is that the locations are listed alphabetically in the supplement, but that’s NOT the order the Frame Job scenes take place in. This means you’ll have to flip back and forth through the supplement to find what is next. Because Frame Job is the core thing being sold here (complete with black sidebar about it as soon as you get past the cover), it would have been smarter and easier to lay out the locations in the order they occur in it rather than alphabetical. After all, when was the last time you bought an adventure where the scenes were out of order? At least this thing is only fifteen pages of writing, so it’s not as if you’re flipping through a core sourcebook trying to find what comes next. The text even gives you a head’s up that things are laid out alphabetically rather than with Frame Job in mind, so that’s something in its favor.
The eight locations in Sprawl Sites are Barren Blocks (ghetto –like area), City Hall, Gambling Den, Lonestar Station, Luxury Hotel, No Tell Hotel (sleazy hourly hotel sort of place), Mall of the World and Trideo Studio. These are fun generic locations that can show up in any major city. Hell, you’ve probably used or encountered several of these location types in your foray into the Sixth World already, but now you have maps and detailed information about the locations. I really enjoyed the location ideas and adventure seeds. The maps were sub-par but for me, it’s the text and substance that matters most. Besides I can always use other maps if need be.
All in all, Sprawl Sites: North America had a lot of potential, but it just doesn’t live up to what could have been. The adventure seeds are neat and the maps are a fun idea, but what’s here isn’t something I’d pay $9.99 (for the PDF) for and especially not $19.99 (for the print version). If you’re fine with the quality of the maps, you might be able to get your money’s worth out of this. It’s just with supplements of the same length like Safehouses and Magical Societies being roughly the same length and only $4.95, Sprawl Sites: North America feels a bit overpriced. You can definitely have fun with this supplement; don’t get me wrong. It’s just you could have fun with other Shadowrun products that are either cheaper for the same page length or contain a lot more substance more the same dollar amount.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/21/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-magical-societies/
When Catalyst Game Labs first teased Magical Societies, I was expecting a larger sourcebook, one possibly filled with adventures. Something more akin to Jet Set, Hazard Pay, or Corporate Intrigue was what I had in mind. So I won’t deny that I was a little disappointed when it turned out to be almost pure Meta-game fiction without any adventures or in-game mechanics. Don’t get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed what was here. I just went with the assumption that this would be bigger and more inclusive than it actually was. Alas, perhaps we’ll get something more akin to that down the road. I’d love to see some adventures doing a run on (or even for!) the Black Lodge.
So what do you get in Magical Societies? Well, you get a gorgeous piece of cover art, a nicely done two page short fiction piece about the Gate of Ishtar (I almost wrote Order of Hermes. Wouldn’t that be an interesting RPG crossover?) that tells the story of said cover, and then the rest of the book is JackPoint storytelling, this time led by Smiling Jack, who long time players might recognize (and who I was surprised to read isn’t a Jackpoint regular). Jack gives a basic overview of magical socities, how to join them, the pros and cons of being a Shadowrunner in a society and then a list of several societies, none of which include the really big magic groups in the Sixth World like the Black Lodge or on how any of the Mega-Corps cloister their Awakened employees away, if they do. I was glad to see a focus on very small organizations. The largest is the size of an A Level corporation, but most are only a few hundred strong, meaning a good GM can really flesh out the organization and even run a chronicle where all the characters are in an organization.
The Societies covered in this PDF include: The oddly named Brotherhood of Darkness (The closest thing to an all white hat/Lawful Good grouping as I’ve ever seen in Shadowrun), The Gate of Ishtar, the voodoo society Cracking of Bones, the Order of Saint Sylvester, Ordo Maximus, Mana, the Magical Investors Club, The Painted Horse Lodge, the Society of the Phoenix Arisen, and the oddly named Seattle United Corporate Council Contractor Society. There are couple of others and a all-too brief write-up of cults that lasts only two paragraphs. Cults in the Sixth World could have easily held a few pages, if not a small standalone PDF like this. Perhaps it will get one someday.
Again, if you’re looking for a lot of game mechanics, new items like foci and talisman, new rules and the like, you won’t find it in this PDF. You get a very small sideboard for each magical society, but you don’t get enough information in them to truly run a society comfortably. The PDF does give some very light in-game info about how to advance in a society (one paragraph), how to use a society as a “Group Ally” or contact, and a new stat called the Secrecy Rating. The higher the number, the more secure and enigmatic they are.
I personally really enjoyed the JackPoint fiction here complete with the occasional comment by various runners, but I still feel this could have been a lot more than it was. Five bucks for meta-game fiction isn’t terrible, but the PDF ends abruptly and I think anyone reading this could tell that CGL could have gone a lot more in-depth with this topic than they did. I’d have happily played $15-30 for a more complete book on the same topic, with some adventures and the fleshing out of larger, better known magical groups, cults and groupings in the Sixth World. Basically, if you are a fan of Shadowrun fiction, this is well worth picking up. If you’re looking for something more mechanics based or that is easily adapted to your current campaign, you might want to look elsewhere. Magical Socities is all fluff and little substance. It’s well-written entertaining fluff to be sure, but it’s not something any Shadowrun player needs nor will feel like they are missing out if they pass this up.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/21/tabletop-review-the-rif
ter-51/
Rifts is a bit of a sore subject for some people, and I have seen instant dismay upon its mention, to the point where I am actually quite intrigued by the reasons why people are so opposed to Palladium. Without going into all of the reasons here (and yes, I’ve heard about the various reasons why), I will say that I sort of came to know Palladium after a lot of the “drama” had unfolded (though it is ongoing), and so I never had invested in Palladium as a game company I relied on and trusted. I guess what I’m saying is that I feel like an observer looking at Palladium’s games on one side and the community that detests them on the other, trying to decide for myself whether that gulf is deserved or not. I do have quite a few Palladium books myself, and I will say that the base die-rolling mechanic is one that I like: I roll a d20 to hit you with a sword, if you want to block it, you have to roll higher than me. Simple and logical. Also the fact that it really isn’t hard to hit someone with a weapon when you are at arm’s length is another thing I think they got right. If you roll above a 5 on a d20 (or somewhere around there) you are going to hit, it’s just a matter of whether your blow is blocked or dodged or whatever. I don’t think anyone could argue effectively that those are not simple and effective dice mechanics.
So, this brings us to me reviewing The Rifter #51, an installment of Palladium’s magazine for their products as well as role-playing in general. Please note that this issue came out in Summer of 2010, and focuses on Rifts as the general theme since it is celebrating 20 years since the game’s introduction.
This issue is a bit of a window into game industry past, as Kevin Siembieda’s section contains him commenting on such items as the conflict with the (then forthcoming) MMORPG Rift, Palladium’s intense financial struggles, and of course upcoming titles. The News section makes Palladium look like they want to expand into all sorts of other spheres: Facebook games, movies, computer games, comics…all this in the wake of near-catastrophe. I don’t even know if any of that stuff actually happened.
News
After the News and the schedule of book releases (a lot of books!) we get to the first article: playing role-playing games with kids up to the mid-teens or so, but mostly focused on the pre-teen years. The article contains a lot of great suggestions that deal with everything from kids’ schedules to discipline to dealing with very immature behavior. As for me, just reading the article brings back memories of gaming as a kid, and I’m glad that I had older people run the game who tolerated me. I don’t even know if I could stand to game with anyone under 24, let alone under 14!
Splicers and Metamorphs
The next article is for Splicers and introduces the Metamorph: a person who has the power to transform into some other type of lifeform. The idea is that the human (or whatever race) is given the power to wrap themselves in a cocoon and emerge some time later as this new being. First the article explains the background of the class, and then gives the basic stats for the class before giving a list of possible forms that can be transformed into. The different forms include such things as “Digger Form” which kind of looks like a cross between a giant centipede and a ferret; the “Angel Flying” form which looks, well, like an angel; “Aquatic Form”, which is like a combination Komodo dragon/salamander/seal… crazy stuff. The forms are designed (in the Splicers universe) to be used for specific purposes, so to travel safely through water you would use the aquatic form, and then once you got there to kick some ass you would transform into something like “Heavy Assault Form”, which looks like the cyberdemon from Doom had a love-child with the queen from Aliens.
The article concludes with the “Swarm Lord O.C.C.” which is basically a guy wearing “hive armor” which has some sort of hive on the back of it that essentially shoots little genetically-engineered missile/bullet insect swarms. There are a few more pages with rules for swarm attacks and the different kinds of bugs that might inhabit the hive armor with stats and descriptions. There’s a ton of material in here! This article is a really great resource and, I think, has a lot of interesting ideas laid out in it, not to mention the awesome art (the Swarm Lord art is insane).
Beyond the Supernatural – Investigation and Armor
The next section is quite long and deals with two subjects directed primarily at Beyond the Supernatural, a horror/thriller setting for the Palladium system. The first part discusses investigations and the types of people that might be investigating things like crime or supernatural activity, but it tries to include more long-term investigators like anthropologists and archaeologists, which is interesting. It offers the Anthropologist occupation, and then the Forensic Scientist occupation, as well as a few new skills related to each like fingerprinting, linguistics, etc.
There are two pages dedicated to discussing skepticism and using stage magic, of all things, to help determine what is paranormal activity and what is not. The next several pages deal with team-making in Beyond the Supernatural and then with rules for various types of armor like using sports gear or standard modern armor.
The Vager – or “wolf people”
The “Wolf Blood” article contains some source material for Rifts in the form of a race of people called The Vager, who are essentially tribal wolf people, or people who live with wolves (or people who dance with wolves?). The article explains who The Vager are and what their tribal hierarchy is, as well as noting the largest clans and such and introducing the Vulbund occupation, which is the name for a Vager and the wolf that accompanies them (because it is a bond, you see).
This article is great except for one section where it mentions that Vager beliefs are “a mixture of Native American and Norse beliefs” and then goes on to describe how they worship Fenrir as a great wolf. What if my game doesn’t have Native Americans or Norse people in the world? What if I don’t like cribbing religion from any cultures on Earth and I think it’s infinitely more interesting, if you’re going to go ahead and make your own race, to at least pretend that their spirituality stems from something original about that culture instead of making it this arbitrary and bald-faced mix of two well-known cultures that I don’t want in my game?! Whew, and here I thought I would get through this article without a rant.
Weapons for Triax 2
This article is essentially a list of weapons and stat blocks. You have such things as a rotary grenade launcher, pulse laser, and a few others. There are attachments listed as well, one of which is basically a double-barrel, pump-action shotgun. Yes folks, you can attach a shotgun to your…gun. You also have some more weapons for the Jaeger, like shoulder-mounted mortars and a melee kit which includes some nasty things like vibro-blades and a neural mace (whatever that is!). Other support includes turrets sentries, and some new Triax cyborgs: a “Glitter Borg” and the “Bombardier Borg”.
To me, this article is like going to an art gallery and entering a room with halogen lights flashing and bright red sirens going off: it’s too much. This is the part of Palladium games I don’t really care for, the massive, over-the-top firepower and damage and whatnot. I mean, where is the role-playing in this stuff? I can only assume that at the beginning of the session the players agree to go blow something up and then spend the next two hours rolling dice to hit and damage. If I wanted to play Warhammer 40,000, I would. Dang, I’m up to two mini-rants now.
Rifts vehicle construction rules – part deux
Part 1 is in The Rifter #50, so you’re going to have to go back and check that out if you want to read it. This is Part 2. This article is a lot like the Triax article in that it is basically just listing cool stuff to put on a vehicle. Want linked weapons? Sure, go ahead. Oversize tires? Fire ‘em up yeah! You can attach such things as loudspeakers, backhoes, and…wait for it…fuzzy dice. You can also outfit the inside with things like a laboratory or give the vehicle a magnetic field.
I can just imagine sitting around a table, spending hours picking through the list and building this awesome vehicle that your group can go blow stuff up in. Good for some laughs, but seriously, I would keep this article as far away from my game group as possible. Want to play a role-playing game? Ok, let’s play. Want to build a really cool vehicle? Take this article and do it on your own time. The funniest part about the article is that in the last paragraph the author mentions that Rifts actually has no vehicle combat rules, but there are some in Heroes Unlimited
Story time and 2010 open house
Next up is a story called “Roman Holiday”, which involves two characters and some crazy mishap with Greek gods and various other interlopers. I’ll spoil part of it for you: Herakles and Hercules get in a fight. Then there are a few pages dedicated to the Palladium open house in 2010, which seemed like a fun event for all of the Palladium fans who attended.
What Do I Think?
Well, The Rifter is basically an ongoing sourcebook, so that is pretty cool. This issue contains diverse things, from Triax to gaming with kids, and I appreciate that. As you might have noticed, I’m not too into the cyborgs and massive weaponry stuff, so that didn’t strike any chords with me. I thought the most interesting article was the Beyond the Supernatural one about investigators and such things. The article about Splicers was pretty cool as well, but again it’s more about capability and power than really role-playing anything (and yes, I’m using my own proprietary definition of role-playing here, you might have another one).
On the whole, I would pick this up if I were an ardent Rifts fan, but I’m only an observant collector. Therefore, I would have to see what articles are inside for me to really be interested. Still, for $6 you get a lot of sourcebook action here!
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/20/tabletop-review-castles
-crusades-to-the-damenheit-bridge/
To the Damenheit Bridge is a two-fold experiment by Troll Lord Games. First, it’s the beginning of a set of ninety-nine cent weekly adventures (at least according to the product description) and second, it’s a crossover to be used with Fat Dragon Games’ Gargoyle Bridge, a print and play miniature location. Now you don’t NEED the Gargoyle Bridge to play this adventure or vice versa, but the two are meant to complement each other. If you prefer to use a different bridge or even to game without miniatures, the adventure will stay play out nicely.
To the Damenheit Bridge is a pretty versatile adventure. It can be played as a quick one shot encounter between adventures or as the start of the weekly mini adventures Troll Lord is putting out. It is designed for three to five mid-level characters and any good DM can scale things to the level of the players.
I should point out that two of the six pages aren’t content. The first page is a full color cover with some snazzy art (see above) and the second page is all legal mumbo jumbo and a plug for the game. So you get four pages of content at roughly a quarter per page. Not bad, but we’ve definitely seen better, although Castles and Crusades PDFs to tend to be on the pricey end compared to other OSRIC/D&D knock-offs.
There isn’t too much to the adventure honestly. It’s meant to only be a one night one-shot, but players should be able to get through this thing in under three hours, and that’s if the DM is padding the hell out of this. You have a few possible random encounters, a magical trap and two battles, one with a 4 HD creature and then one immediately after with an 8 HD creature. If that doesn’t sound like a challenge for mid-level characters, you’re right. Players should be able to finish off each of these battles in three rounds or less. The only real challenge is that the harder monster has a 3D8 Hit Point attack, but that still shouldn’t phase too many mid-level characters unless they are all mages.
The adventure doesn’t provide the DM with the impetus for why you are in the nearest town to the Damnenheit Bridge, nor why the players are going to WIllowbrook (the town they are trying to reach) from there. You’re just where players are staring and where they are going and it’s up to the DM to come up with reasons why. This makes To the Damenheit Bridge more of a story hook than an adventure and I was a little disappointed by this revelation. The good news is that the adventure does provide a ton of filler on the town on Elne and the nearby regions. The adventure even provides you a map of the area, but if you look at it, you’re not actually going from Point A to Point B in a straight line and taking the Damenheit Bridge is actually out of your way. That’s…weird.
All in all, for less than a buck, you’re getting a somewhat mediocre experience. The adventure has a few gaffes, such as saying “too short” when they mean “too low” in describing why the bridge sometimes floods and there’s not a lot of substance for an actual adventure here. What you’re paying for is mostly filler about the region around Elne and little else. Right now I’m going to be kind and give this a thumb’s in the middle as To the Damenheit Bridge is meant to be the first is a set of weekly adventures. Perhaps it will flow better when all the pieces have been released and then either collected or played/read consecutively. Right now it’s not got substance; it’s just the piece is lacking in the area where it truly needs it and has too much filler in areas few DMs or players will care about.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/20/tabletop-review-captain
s-logs-from-the-sandbox-003-the-mining-colony-at-elkos-iv/r />
The Mining Colony at Elkos IV is #3 in the “Captain’s Logs” series for Occult Moon Games. Unlike the fantasy-based series that started off the Toys for the Sandbox, this series seems to be open to multiple authors and artists, which is pretty cool. The art is nice, very much like classic RPG books, with some computer rendered pieces.
Overview
This booklet comes with a map that covers part of the surface of a planet called Elkos IV. There are a few areas of note, presumably ripe for a little investigation. The main one is the abandoned mining installation, left over from when there was promise of some valuable substance under the frozen surface. There is also an abandoned city, a purported region where the lost ships might be, and a few others.
There is a brief planet profile of Elkos IV, and then a few tables for space and planetary hazards. Of course, there is the essential part of the Sandbox modules, the plot twists, and then a few profiles of major NPCs. The planet is described as being nearly inhospitable to life (a “complete snowball”), yet one of the plot twists involves there being a race of chipmunks of all things. This is a little silly to me, because as a GM how am I going to explain how they live or what they eat when there is virtually no other life on the planet? These kind of inconsistencies are a continual source of weakness in the continuity of these modules. The setting is put forward, and then ideally the plot twists make sense inside the setting. If you’re going to put forward an inhospitable planet, you better help me explain to myself and the players why there is any life there.
What Do I Think?
This module seems a bit more focused, a bit more coherent and, at the same time, a bit more open than the module before this one. It feels more like the sandbox is being defined, but the goal of the sandbox is pushed less. That is, the whole “lost ships” mission is put forward, but that in itself is an open-ended goal. Would ships be there? Maybe, it’s up to the GM and the players. Meanwhile, there’s all this other stuff to engage the players if you want. In my opinion, one of the better modules from the Sandbox series. GMs be warned, it’s still a skeleton of an adventure so be prepared to either make up or write up a lot of the details. Also, the chipmunks.
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Originally Posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/11/tabletop-review-captain
s-logs-from-the-sandbox-report-002-the-broken-omnicrys/
The Broken Omnicrys is #2 in a new series from Occult Moon games, publishers of the Toys for the Sandbox series. In this new tack, they are addressing the sci-fi genre.
Overview
The format has not really changed from the Toys for the Sandbox booklets, with the first few pages containing some general information about the location and situation, a page of plots and twists, NPCs, and some items. The NPCs are given some general stat guidelines and descriptions of their history and current habits. There are three items in the back, and they have some stats and descriptions as well. There are two small tables to roll on to determine space hazards and planetary hazards. There are some nice illustrations, one of a ship and one of the solar system, as well as the cover illustration which is by Ashe Rhyder and Matt Jackson (did they both draw it or what?).
This booklet concerns a stolen artifact of power called an “Omnicrys”, which is some sort of crystal that holds psychic and spiritual energies from the “Forerunners” (an ancient people that was apparently highly advanced). There are several worlds detailed with facts about their atmosphere, gravity, inhabitants, etc. wherein I suppose the adventure is to take place. The thief (a.k.a. “The Mad Templar”) of the crystal also stole someone’s ship, and he is eager to get it back at whatever cost. The impression is of a high-level mission that involves some important and powerful organizations on both sides of the law.
What Do I Think?
The Occult Moon offerings continue to be steady, but remain rather amateur in quality. It is good that they have a defined format that works for them, that helps their publications have some consistency, but the writing and overall conception remains the weak point, and the question I keep having is: who is their audience? I also find myself asking why they don’t just produce fully-written modules at this point, since they basically give a skeleton of an adventure, but also include a pre-determined plot (the Omnicrys). What is the point of having tools for a sandbox if the sandbox comes defined with the tools? I’m guessing that I’m not the target audience for this product; I am probably asking too many questions.
There are a few typos, a fair amount of spelling errors, and (this is almost purely based on my opinion of how a module should be written) too much exaggeration of plot points. For instance, the thief is described thusly: “armed with the Omnicrys, he may be almost unstoppable”. It’s probably just me, but I want to rail against every adventure being this epic struggle to overcome something “almost unstoppable,” which I feel is the structure of a lot of adventures, especially classic ones. Basically, you start small, and then ramp up to the Big Bad. Yawn. I’m not saying that is what this module is, I’m just saying that by setting the stage in the way that it is it’s primed for that kind of story.
Of course, the Sandbox series is open to taking it anywhere you want to go, you can expand or contract the module any way you like. For some people, they may read through The Broken Omnicrys and be inspired. As for me, I think the $1.99 price tag is a bit heavy for this item, it would be a much more comfortable buy for me in the $0.99 range. Even then, I would like to see some more flexibility in this supposed sandbox-land. Why not just expand on the plot twists instead of giving a main plot in the setting information, and let the GM and players decide where to go and what to do? Sounds much more sandbox-y in my opinion.
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