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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/06/17/tabletop-review-the-arc
haeologists-handbook-call-of-cthulhutrail-of-cthulhu/
An archaeologist is a common NPC, antagonist, plot hook and supporting character in a lot of Cthulhu works, be they fiction, film or tabletop gaming. Yet oddly enough, there has never been a template for the occupation in Call of Cthulhu. The core rulebook? No. The Investigator’s Companion? No. Byhakee? Nope, not there either. It’s so odd considering how important archaeology and archaeologists are to the game and its offshoots, like Trail of Cthulhu, Age of Cthulhu and even other horror role-playing games. Well, author Helen Maclean thought it was about time to give the archaeologist its due and let it take center stage. Innsmouth House Press agreed, and together, they’ve put out a lovely eighty page book entitled The Archaeologist’s Handbook.
I should point out that, although I list the book as a Call of Cthulhu product, it’s actually very system neutral, and could easily be used with everything from Chill or All Flesh Must Be Eaten to Modern d20 games. There are only three pages truly dedicated to any system in this book, and those are the sample player characters included towards the end – although I have no idea what system they are for. It’s certainly not Call OR Trail, and there is no listing or nod to what system they are using here. The rest of the book is more a treatise or collection of essays dedicated to fleshing out what archaeology is and how one goes about doing it as a profession, rather than a collection of game mechanics or rule lists. For a player, The Archaeologist Handbook helps them to understand their character better. By knowing the hows and whys of the profession, they will better be able to roleplay and perhaps even use their allotted skills better. For a Keeper, it lets them flesh out NPCs, digs where something horrible is going to happen and even use real world locations, famous digs, museums and hoaxes as piece of their own homebrew adventures. It’s exceptionally done, but just remember, this is more a tome of essays or papers without footnotes and a proper bibliography than an actual full-on gaming supplement, and because of that, The Archaeologist’s Handbook might not be for everyone.
There are fourteen sections to The Archaeologist’s Handbook. The introduction explains why the book was written and its intended purpose. “What is Archaeology?” explains the history of the profession. As a folklorist, I was glad to see the mention of how archaeology differs from anthropology, as you’d be surprised how often people assume the two are similar. I know about as much on cleaning an ancient relic as an archaeologist probably does about a specific subculture. There is a ton of great information in this chapter, with commentary on how the science evolved and also the large role that the concept of evolution played within it.
Although the timeline paragraphs are interesting, it’s the chapter, “Site Information,” and the one following it, entitled “Techniques,” that will be of the most interest to Keepers, especially those that run their horror/modern era games more like detective work. These chapters explain how an eventual dig location is formed over the years/centuries, and the manner in which the unearthing/exhuming process is begun. Again, for a Keeper, this is a great way to come up with a story of their own; basically, this helps to create a lost city, ancient ruin, relic of unfathomable power and so on, and have it be lost (and found) in a realistic manner. The techniques described in the self-same chapter are a wonderful bounty of ideas on how to add realism to a character or chronicle, especially with the history on how excavation techniques evolved over the years. That way, you can use the right style of excavation based on the time period and location in which your adventure is set. You’ll learn the rudimentary basics of dating, aerial photography, geographical surveying and more. Now, there’s not enough to actually give the ins and outs of their methods; merely enough so that you understand the concept and can use it as window dressing in your adventure(s). This is the second longest chapter in the book, and this is either the point where your imagination will be fueled with ideas, or where you’ll say, “This isn’t a gaming manual/supplement at all!”
“Museums” is simply a collection of some of the more famous museums in North America, Europe and North Africa. Sorry Asia, South America and Australia, but you’re not included. Each museum in this section is given a few paragraphs of detail and a url for its actual real world website. Some of the museum choices are odd. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago over the multiple Smithsonian’s in Washington D.C. for example, will definitely raise an eyebrow, but what’s here is a nice quick snapshot of various locations in which to set adventures.
“Running an Archaeological Excavation” sounds self-explanatory, but it really isn’t. This chapter goes into how to obtain dig funding, dealing with hired workers that don’t have the same sense of regard for history as their employers, and how to close a dig up once finished. “Fakes and Forgeries” talks about the three biggest scams in archaeology, including the Cardiff Giant and Piltdown Man.
“A Geography of Archaeology” takes up twenty-four pages, and is the best section for coming up with adventure ideas. Indeed, this chapter includes multiple story hooks – one after each description of a famous location. Places like Stonehenge, Troy, Easter Island and more can be found in this chapter. The plot hooks are really interesting as well, especially as there are multiple options for each to unfold.
After that comes the aforementioned weird characters for the game (which I wish would have been used for various systems on how to make an archaeologist template instead), followed by “A Day in the Life,” which is three fictional journal entries from various archaeologists to show what a typical day for one in a specific time period (Gaslight, 1920s, Modern Era) would be like. After that, the book winds down with “Famous Archaeologists,” which is self explanatory, “Equipment List,” which gives you a list of what archaeologists from a given era would carry with them, and finally “Further Reading,” which gives a list of books, both fiction and non-fiction for extended reading on the subject matter.
All in all, The Archaeologists Handbook is a fun one. Ten dollars for the PDF is a bit pricey for what you are getting, considering it’s not formatted very well (chapters start in the middle and even sometimes at the bottom of a page! It’s like a poorly done monograph) and there isn’t any art or colour, so this is pricey for what you get. For a comparable price you can easily get a full fledged (albeit it probably drier) book on the subject. The physical version is harder to recommend, become of the price for that (plus shipping costs from overseas), but for those that like in depth gaming supplements that flesh out a particular class or give you more substance for your setting, The Archaeologist’s Handbook is a wonderful foray into an occupation that has somehow been treated as second rate for the past three decades. Content is king here, and I enjoyed the material presented personally, but the cost plus the lack of mechanics may limit who will pick this up – especially the physical copy.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/28/tabletop-review-buffalo
-castle-deluxe-tunnels-trolls/
Back in January of this year, I joined 1600+ other Kickstarter backers to fund Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls, which is the second oldest tabletop gaming system. Well, Kickstarter backers recently received their first digital reward: a reprint of Buffalo Castle. For those unaware, long before there were Choose Your Own Adventure Novels and things like the Lone Wolf gamebooks, Tunnels & Trolls was putting out solo adventures that a gamer could play by themselves. No DM, no group of friends. Just you, three six sided dice and the adventure itself. As a very young boy, I loved solitary adventures, because it meant I could play when I wanted to without having to organize some big session with other people’s schedules. For others, it meant they could play an RPG even if they couldn’t afford a video game or didn’t have enough friends to run an actual game with. These solo adventures were a wonderful idea, and for a whole, they spawned an entire industry. As such, it’s nice to have the progenitor of the concept back and readily available as the herald for the upcoming Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls line. Thirty years later, the adventure is still as fun to play through as ever, although you WILL need a T&T rulebook to make a character and play through Buffalo Castle.
Buffalo Castle is for a single First Level Fighter only, which is a good way to do things, as you get just the basics. You don’t have to worry about magic, speed or anything. This is an entry level adventure for newcomers and veterans alike, and generally the easiest way to start off an old school fantasy setting is with a Fighter. The plot of the adventure is simple: a sick child needs a magic potion and the nearest one lies within the walls of Buffalo Castle. Unfortunately, the wizard who lives in the castle and makes the potions is completely mad, so they need a brave warrior to enter and get the potion before the child succumbs to its strange disease. It’s not Shakespeare, but for an intro and/or solo adventure, the plot works and establishes a good motivation for why you are wandering the halls of a castle filled with monsters and things that want to split your head open.
The layout of Buffalo Castle will be familiar to any of you who have played a Choose Your Own Adventure or roleplaying Gamebook, in that you’ll be reading a numbered section which will then tell you to flip to a different section. This is to build suspense and keep the game fresh. It also means that the adventure is far from linear, and you can replay it several times, discovering new content and battles with each playthrough. At the same time, it also means you shouldn’t try to read the adventure like you would a normal one, as it will just come off as gibberish. I do love section 19E though. It made me laugh as I flipped through the pages trying to see what I missed on my playthroughs.
The last few pages of the adventure are a Wandering Monster table and a map of the Castle, in case someone wants to try and convert the adventure into one a group of players can enjoy together. I think that’s a nice touch. All in all, Buffalo Castle remains as fun as it has ever been, and it’s a perfect example of the somewhat humourous less “SAVE THE WORLD FROM A GREAT EVIL” mindset a lot of fantasy games have. It’s a simple low-level concept for a low level character, and it holds up thirty years later. If you’re a Tunnels & Trolls fan, more than likely some variant of this adventure is already in your collection. If you’re new to the system, the idea of tabletop game or solo adventuring just sounds appealing to you, I heartily recommend picking up Buffalo Castle along with the core Tunnels & Trolls rulebook and giving it a try. T&T is generally the system I suggest for people brand new to RPGs (along with the old Marvel Super Heroes RPG by TSR), and Buffalo Castle is a perfect example of why.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/06/10/tabletop-review-free-ci
ty-of-eskadia-jack-of-lies-castles-crusades/
As this is my fifteenth Castles and Crusades review, you can probably tell I’m a big fan of the franchise. It’s easily my favorite OSR style system, and I always enjoy seeing what Troll Lord Games and other publishers put out for it. Today we’re looking at a new massive campaign setting in Free City of Eskadia. This 138 page book contains everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, you could possibly want to know about a fantasy setting. The history of the area, guilds, stores, prices, important people, sewer system descriptions – you name it, it’s in there. Free City of Eskadia is a whopping thirty two chapters of information, which sounds crazy impressive and perhaps even a little intimidating. The good news is that many of those chapters could have easily been one really long chapter instead of broken down as minutely as things are. For example, the adventure in the book takes up five chapters, which is an odd way to do things, especially when the adventure is only twenty-eight pages. I personally think one chapter with five sections would have flown better, but really, it’s all semantics when it comes down to it.
The big problem with Free City of Eskadia is that, as impressive as all the information about the campaign setting is, it is one of the dullest, driest reads I have ever had with a tabletop product. I had to keep putting the book down as my eyes glazed over. We’re talking Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off dry. I understand that a campaign setting, or any book designed to set the stage, can sometimes read like a textbook, but this was exceptionally above and beyond hard to wade through – and this is coming from someone who is a big Castles & Crusades fan, and a professional non-fiction writer used to doing essays and papers with bibliographies, footnotes and the like. I was very impressed by the level of detail in Free City of Eskadia, but it was so hard to get through because of the writing style and narrative, and I can’t remember the last time I had to force myself to get through a book for review’s purposes. Even products I’ve hated were easier to read and get through than this. I hate saying this, but I guess you can’t win them all.
Free City of Eskadia is also riddled with typographical and grammatical errors, often times in unintentionally hilarious ways. Look at the following sentence, for example, from page 39: “The ghost is quite vengeful and needs to be exercised.” Obviously that should be EXORCISED, but it is quite funny to think of a malicious specter whose only weakness is a holy treadmill. This is just one example of the many I’ve found here. Although these issues can be corrected in the PDF version, I feel bad for the people who ordered the hard or softcover version of the book, because you CAN’T fix one of those once they’ve been printed.
The important thing is that, if you can wade through the writing style, there is so much to be had in this book. It may “only” be 138 pages, but it feels as in-depth as the 300+ page location books we’ve seen from other companies like White Wolf or TSR. There is a chapter devoted to just the guilds of the city, along with the major houses for political intrigue. Each of the nine wards of the city get their own chapter, and within each one are names, descriptions and stat blocks of major NPCs. Besides the multi-chapter adventure, there are five other chapters devoted to story seeds, short adventures and dungeon crawls (although most aren’t literally dungeons) that you can use for a full on campaign. It’s wonderful just how much content is here, and I feel bad that I just didn’t care for the writing style or the manner in which all the content was presented, because I was really excited for this book. There are new races, a new NPC class, a full chapter on new magic items, another chapter of gods to worship and two new monsters. Again, there is a shockingly large amount of content in this book for the size. Now, will I ever end up using this? Probably not, due to how dull I found the content, but that’s really a subjective thing, and what I find boring, you might find thrilling. I will say that if you check my Castles & Crusades review archive, I to tend like the majority of what comes out for the system, so you might want to read those reviews and see if our tastes match up. I will probably try in a year or so to come back to see if the book has aged well or if I’m more receptive to the writing style, but for now, let’s call Free City of Eskadia a thumbs in the middle. Yay for the sheer amount of content and level of detail, but boo for the errors and extremely dull writing style.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/06/06/tabletop-review-hideous
-creatures-hounds-of-tindalos-trail-of-cthulhu/
Hounds of Tindalos is the second in the Hideous Creatures series in which Trail of Cthulhu scribe Ken Hite tries to breathe new life into classic (but maybe tired) Lovecraftian adversaries. The previous release, Deep Ones was…mediocre. There weren’t a lot of new ideas in the piece and the content was very hit or miss. It was a good attempt at starting to talk about Deep Ones, but it wasn’t something I could recommend. Unfortunately while Hounds of Tindalos is a little better, there’s still not enough content for the asking price (only seven of the ten pages have content) and again, most of the ideas aren’t new or all that original, but this does generate some interesting talking points which any Cthulhu-oriented game system can take advantage of.
The first section is some optional descriptions for Hounds of Tindalos, such as providing them with motivation or giving them predatory characteristics of non-canine animals, such as sharks or tigers. I like the predatory aspect as good descriptions from a Keeper makes a creature seem more loathsome and frightening. Meanwhile, I don’t like the idea of trying to lock down the motivation for these aliens creatures. In providing a discernible raison d’etre, you make the Hounds less foreboding or frightening. These are alien beings beyond our comprehension; leave them that way.
From there the piece goes into a Trail of Cthulhu stat block and special abilities that a Hound might have. This is nicely done and these new abilities will keep players on their toes. Unfortunately this is followed by “Variations,” which is yet another misguided attempt to shoehorn the Hounds of Tindalos into a predictable understandable creature with motivations and behaviors that can be discovered and even predicted. Most of the ideas here aren’t very good and feel like things were just thrown at the wall to see what sticks. There’s nothing in “Variations” I found very appealing or even mildly interesting.
“Mythic Echoes” is the attempt to fit a Lovecraftian creature into folkloric creatures of various cultures. Much like with Deep Ones, I applaud the attempt, but not the result. After starting off the piece by admonishing players not to think of or treat the Hounds of Tindalos like dogs, that’s that is done here. Worse, the folklore pieces are too brief/shallow to be of any use and some are a bit erroneous, to put it nicely. This section ends up coming off as, “Look at all the mythological dogs I can name” rather than being of anything truly useful to a Keeper. Worse yet those that would fine this interesting are more than likely well versed in folklore and mythology enough to realize that these descriptors are all too brief for any real use. As such, what’s the point?
The next section is “Investigations,” and I rather liked this. It’s a wide range of ways that skills in Trail of Cthulhu can be used to generate clues about the Hounds to prevent players getting stuck. These are all really well done and fun to read.
After that we have four adventure seeds followed by a short bibliography. “Fugue in the Key of Dee” is a bit dull and convoluted while “Don’t Mess With Tindalos” has potential to be either very memorable or a complete train wreck, depending on the Keeper running it. “The Dunne-ish Horror” is a WONDERFUL example of how to use the Hounds of Tindalos, while “Every Dog Has Its Day” isn’t so much an adventure seed as two paragraphs that aren’t necessarily connected and that neither of which uses a Hound correctly. So again, hit or miss, which really sums up the entire Hounds of Tindalos piece and the Hideous Creatures series in general.
We’re two in and so far, the Hideous Creatures series fails to impress. Both pieces have some good ideas in them, but the mediocre or crap bogs the quality pieces down. With the first pieces, I thought the problem was that there wasn’t enough space to flesh out the ideas and so everything was being half-assed or forced to be more vague than desired due to a lack of space. Now I’m starting to think the opposite is true and there simply isn’t enough quality thoughts to fill up the seven pages of these articles so padding of any kind is being added. I’d like these articles a lot more if they didn’t feel like word vomit and were more in-depth commentary or detailed ideas on a few pieces instead of short bullet points or underdeveloped paragraphs. Hopefully the third time will be the charm, but honestly, so far, you can spend your three dollars on better pieces.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/06/05/tabletop-review-trouble
-brewing-barebones-fantasy/
Trouble Brewing is an adventure for BareBones Fantasy, a simple fantasy role-playing game. This adventure is for 3-5 characters of rank 1, or higher rank characters if the GM ups the strength of the bad guys. The premise of this adventure is that there is a town famed for its drinking establishments that has experienced an outbreak of violence that is not readily explained.
Angry Dwarves
The opening hook for the adventure is that players stumble upon a senseless murder outside of a tavern, one dwarf has murdered another in cold blood. Players will have to decide what to do, whether to chase down the murderer as he stumbles away, etc. After dealing with the crime scene, players will get a chance to talk to the constable who might offer them some cash to figure just what in Tenkar (the name of the town) is going on. This is where the all-too-familiar interrogation part comes in, where the players try to determine where they need to go and what they need to do. What I really like about this section is that there are three tiers of information that the players can retrieve: that which is easily obtained, that which will take some work to uncover, and that which is only learned if the players specifically look for it.
One place the players are sure to start looking is in the tavern itself, partly because the rest of the town is rather absent so this is either an opportunity for the GM to do some town-building or some on-the-fly creation. The module text only covers what is absolutely necessary. So, as long as the tavern is investigated further the characters can advance the story. If they get caught up in exploring the town for whatever reason then the GM is somehow going to have to get them back to the tavern to move the plot along.
Sure, Blame The Little Guys
Spoiler alert, this is where I allude to the twist while trying to avoid outright explaining it. Basically, the characters should discover that the new owner of the tavern became such under mysterious circumstances, and if they follow the rabbit trail of clues they should discover that something not very nice is going in the sewers below the tavern…and it involves ale…and it’s gross. Once the characters get down there they will have a sort of mini dungeon crawl until they discover the whole truth, and hopefully put a stop to whatever is going on.
Overall, it seems like a nice little scenario that shouldn’t take more than one session unless somehow they players really get on a tangent or the GM wants to stretch it out with his or her own efforts. The story is nothing all that special, standard investigate and eradicate procedure, but should be fun for gamers who like BareBones Fantasy. Everything is written and presented well, and the layout is nice with a good background and excellent maps. The only weird thing is that I couldn’t tell if the blocky objects above some sections were just some strange graphic or if they were supposed to be titles that got messed up somehow in the production process. Also, the back of the PDF seems to imply color maps within but everything inside is in black and white. Otherwise, I have no complaints, seems like a good product, although it would have been nice if Tenkar were fleshed-out a little more. It’s cheap too, and if you like this adventure there are more on the way: the next one is Slimy Trail of the God-Snail.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/31/tabletop-review-arms-an
d-equipment-guide-add-2e/
I can’t think of any other book that has shaped my perception of the weapons and armor used in various medieval-esque fantasy games than the Arms and Equipment Guide originally written for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. I can remember leafing through this thing time and time again, ogling the illustrations and trying to imagine ways to fit the various equipment into my games. Weaponblack alone could be found multiple times masquerading as mystery liquid in bottles and barrels, with me sitting there in front of the players, tightlipped, hoping they would drink it. I distinctly remember an adventurer finding several small barrels in a store room, opening one of them, and me describing the contents as a “thick, dark liquid” or something like that. The player then asked doggedly if it was weaponblack, and I sheepishly answered that it was.
Give Me My Coin Mail
This supplement starts of perfectly with a countdown of armor by armor class value from the lowly padded armor all the way to full plate. Each armor type is accompanied with a full-page illustration that depicts some scene where the armor is being worn. Some of my favorites from this section include the special types of armor that are included as a sort of side note under the larger armor type. The first (in countdown order) is the spiked leather armor which is a special type of studded leather. Not only does this armor offer comparable protection to regular studded leather, but should someone get you in a bear hug or other grappling position, your armor will do a few points of damage to them! Awesome (at least, that’s what I thought back when). My next two favorites both are under the scale mail armor type: “Sea Elf” scale and coin mail. First, the thought of sea elves was extremely awesome. Second, the armor was made from crazy materials like eel skin and fish scales. The coin mail is like the D&D version of bling: a set of scale armor made from coins. This concept has fascinated me ever since, and has made me wonder if a vest of armor made from quarters would be considered insane. Probably.
There is a questionable difference between hide armor and leather armor, the former being Armor Class 6 and the latter Armor Class 8. In the hide armor section, this is explained as the hide being more stiff than leather and the wearers of hide relying more on their agility to avoid a hit than the typical leather users. The downside of hide armor is that it smells and no one will mistake you for anything but a savage if you wear it, but when it comes down to it players can always game the system and figure out a way to make the better (and probably cheaper) hide armor work. When it comes down to it, I’m not sure hide armor merits the extra two levels of Armor Class below leather.
At the end of this section are some special armors like Gnomish Workman’s Leather, which is basically a Goonies type of suit that gives that character the excuse to whip out any gadget they might dream up. “Goblin nose-hair pliers? I think I have some of those in my wrist pouch!” There is also Elven Chain Mail (read: Mithril), and Drow Chain Mail (which is just a little better than Elven Chain Mail, oh ho ho ho) among a few other armors specialized for races. You’ve got a shields page, home of the infamous tower shield, and a helmets page with a nice illustration of the most fetching headwear. Following that is the “Horse Armor DLC” for D&D but better – it’s barding and other various mount accoutrements.
A Cringeworthy Illustration
The section on weapons is the other star of this show. Oddly, it begins with the arquebus, a rudimentary gunpowder weapon. Soon you realize that the only reason this gun kicks off the weapons section is because it starts with “A”, and the weapons are listed alphabetically like an encyclopedia. This is good, since the book is a reference work primarily anyway. This section is fantastic, it’s got your standard swords and axes, but it also has things that might become weapons like the belaying pin, gaff, or whip. All kinds of polearms, slings, arrows, bows, infantry weapons, cavalry weapons, and the like are described and explained here. Pages and pages of information, more than you probably even need to know, fill the imagination with scenes of the battlefield and regiments marching this way and that with dangling hand weapons and hefted polearms. At the end is a huge chart listing all the weapons and their stats, which is immensely useful. Instead of having a stat block next to the weapon’s text description, they chose to wait and just put it all in a big table, which I think is much better and keeps the section from becoming cluttered. There is an illustration of the caltrops that always make me grimace a little – on one side it has a hand dropping several kinds of caltrops, and on the other side a very non-graphic picture of a foot stepping on them. Ouch! Caltrops, another adventurer favorite.
Following the bulky weapons section is the section on equipment and clothes. This is a sort of general smattering of information but it definitely feels useful and informative, not tacked on. You have mostly the essential and standard adventuring gear here, and I think equipment has been delved into more comprehensively in some other books. Backpacks, tinderboxes, thief tools, and lanterns are some of the familiar equipment. The clothing section gives very nice, short descriptions of lots of words you hear when reading fantasy novels like “tabard” and “tunic”, though there are even more out there I know it (because I’ve read the word somewhere and thought “what the hell is that?”). In this section you have typical dress guidelines, some common materials (although it would have been nice to have more materials described), as well as specific descriptions of objects like the ruff, gorget, and breeches.
A Must-Have
I can’t think of any circumstances where I would not recommend this book. It succinctly and authoritatively describes so many fantasy objects taken from medieval eras that, unless you already know all of this stuff and more, would simply be necessary if you even want to know what you are talking about when discussing armor, weapons, and equipment. Even if you are familiar with this material, having it around for reference is always helpful, not to mention the easy-to-use table of stats. This book is also made 168% better because of the illustrations within. They are simply amazing and incredibly helpful when trying to visualize the objects being described. In many cases the different types or styles are shown next to each other in the same illustration in a totally thematic way. One particularly great example of this is the illustration for chain mail, which shows two guards (presumably) in chain mail questioning an uneasy traveller while another man in ring mail looks on. To see the items “in action” with these illustrations just breathes so much life into what might otherwise be a dry volume. So, since this is basically one of my favorite supplements ever, I give it two plate-armored thumbs up, the only downside being that codpieces are not mentioned.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/31/the-invention-book-pfrp
g/
I came to this book for inspiration in my own campaign since it’s going towards a clash between sci-fi and fantasy, but that’s a different story. The Invention Book is the collected inventions for the Tinker class. This supplement for Paizo’s Pathfinder is for use with the Tinker class only. It’s a handy list if you already have a Tinker created and you want to look up what exactly this or that invention does. Interjection Games had a golden opportunity to look a little further than just class-specific mechanics. A name like The Invention Book made me expect more, but that may just be me.
If you are unfamiliar with the Tinker, it’s a class that summons/constructs an automaton to come to his aid. The Tinker can then upgrade his automaton with various inventions. These are scribed unto Blue Prints. A Tinkerer has a limited amount of Blue Prints each day. He has however an Invention Book that contains all the inventions he knows. It’s like a mix of Wizard and Summoner that enhances his Eidolon with transcribed scrolls from a gadget inspired spell book.
I was hoping The Invention Book would expand on the concept of inventions in a high fantasy setting. I remember in my fledgling years playing AD&D the gnomes had marvelous inventions, and not just for fighting either. A stone lavatory with a Black Pudding in the septic tank, and voilà! You had in-house toilet facilities. Water clocks. Gears and levers. A water spout with create water. BAM! Complete indoor plumbing combined with a Black Pudding Stool(tm). Sadly, there are no such thoughts in this book. It’s a bare bones list of all the inventions available for the Tinker class, so without further delay let’s see what all the fuss is about.
This book gives a detailed list over inventions the tinkerer might have available to him. The Invention Book lists all 121 inventions available for the Tinker class. I find the book lacking in organization. It would benefit from either grouping the inventions with level, or type. As it is now its strictly alphabetical order sorted by name of invention. It can get quite hard to find level appropriate inventions. Also if you want your automaton to specialize in something, for instance poison, you must either know the specific names or read through the whole list to find what you are after. Imagine if you had a list of all wizard spells, except instead of being listed by level, they are listed alphabetically regardless of spell level. It’s messy.
The visual layout of The Invention Book is pleasing with two columns in black and white on each page. Barring the front page and the OGL statement on the last page, the only thing remaining is thirteen pages with 121 inventions for the Tinker and his automaton.
I feel that Interjection Games missed a great opportunity with a supplement named like that. They have made a class that could bring a little more tech or steampunk feel to an already established fantasy setting. I would have loved to see what the Tinker could accomplish other than enhancing his automaton. I realize, of course, that Interjection Games may have expanded more on the subject of invention in their other supplements to the Tinker. I urge you to inform me in the comments if they have or not. All in all, it would be nice to have some mechanic-specific thoughts on how to implement inventions and not just automaton upgrades. The book is only suited as a reference book, for those moments when you just want to look up exactly how that invention was phrased again.
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Publisher Reply: |
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Quite simply, sir, all of the fun and flavor that you're looking for is something that has to be paid for, so if you find a little something missing on your gaming palate, that is precisely what I was going for. This is, and always will be, a reference, created specifically because the Rogue Alpha fighter archetype uses tinker inventions and I didn't want to reprint those inventions in a for-sale supplement. As such, this little dry pile of crunch was made available for free so anyone could play that archetype for $1.25 rather than have to spend $4 on the tinker to gain access to the inventions.
And to be quite honest, the fact that the entire tinker class has been dumped onto the d20pfsrd makes this little freebie more and more obsolete by the day. For the flavor you are missing, including the rather ridiculous inventions you are missing, see the tinker's primary product. |
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/30/tabletop-review-greyhaw
k-adventures-vecna-lives-advanced-dungeons-dragons-2nd-editi
on/
Unlike most AD&D gamers of my generation, I wasn’t that into Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. I preferred Ravenloft and Greyhawk (and later, Planescape). Greyhawk just had so many characters that captured my imagination. Iuz the Evil. The one eyed, one handed lich Vecna. The Circle of Eight. The vampire Kas. Mordenkainen. So on and so forth. Here now was an adventure that not only had the players encounter all of these legends of D&D lore, but for a short while, let you PLAY as some of them. How cool is that?
Vecna Lives! is a huge adventure for many reasons. The first is that for the first time, Vecna himself is given form and concept. Before this adventure, he was just a nebulous concept with no real information about him given save for the little write-ups about the artifacts that bear his name. It’s also the death of the Circle of Eight, which is somewhat amusing because the Circle of Eight was also a vaguely defined group until right before this adventure was written and then Venca comes and kills them all. I can’t overestimate what a “HOLY CRAP!” moment that was for anyone who read or played Vecna Lives! back in the day. Here you are getting to play as the Circle of Eight in the prologue and then Vecna destroys them in only a few rounds. It doesn’t matter what the players try and do, the adventure has an answer and counter for any action they take. It is short, brutal and highlights the power and horror that is Vecna better than anything else I can imagine. Unlike most adventures where there is obvious “Dungeon Master VS. PCs” issues going on, only the prologue is written in this manner and because it’s not the actual characters made by the players getting snuffed out in such a cruel and horrific fashion, it’s unlikely to cause any sore feelings. It’s simply there to stun and shock players, set the tone for the rest of the adventure and make them realize that there is a VERY GOOD CHANCE their own beloved PCs might not make it through the adventure, even at the high level they are at.
Vecna Lives! is for six to eight characters between levels 12 and 15. That’s pretty high for a published adventure and should be a red flag as to what awaits them, if the prologue didn’t already do that. Players will be literally traversing the entire world of Greyhawk rather than stick to a single dungeon, city or location. This is a world-spanning epic, one of the first ever released by TSR for a Dungeons & Dragons setting, and the impact of what occurs within these pages would not only shape Greyhawk but eventually Ravenloft, Planescape and even the core default game of third edition. This adventure is also arguably the most lethal one ever released for Second Edition and possible since the original S-Series like Tomb of Horrors for First Edition. Make no mistake about it – Vecna Lives! is a harsh cruel adventure determined to put some PCs in the ground, and that sense of fear players will have of losing their precious characters is exactly the mood this thing needs to strike to be effective. The text strongly encourages the DM to run this like a horror film and I empathically agree with that decision.
After all that is said and done, PCs end up with a second set of pregens (unless PCs WANT to risk their beloved characters), meet with Mordenkainen himself and set out to solve the mystery of how Venca returned, WHO Vecna is, what his plans are and finally, how to stop him. The adventure will take players to the Great Library of Greyhawk, multiple temples, various cities and other planes of reality, all while dealing with cultists of this now demi-god lich. There are a lot of twists and turns with the ultimate one when Vecna is…killed by VECNA? WHA-ZUH? It’s a great reveal that will have players stunned and if anything, even more afraid of what awaits them. I love all the plot twists and reveals in this thing. Another great moment is when the lich offers any of the players the chance to join him and be his second in command by killing the rest of the party. It’s always fun to see if someone does.
The adventure culminates in a literal battle of the gods. Either the lesser god Vecna’s machinations are foiled for the time being or he becomes the sole Greater God of Greyhawk, thus changing the landscape of everything forever. Of course, the canon response is that Vecna loses, but more often than not, when this adventure is played, it’s the PCs that tend to go down in flames. Regardless of how things turn out, this adventure really turned Greyhawk on its head and for those that encountered it back in the day, it still sticks in their memory even after hundreds of adventures have blurred away. I know I will probably never get the initial prologue of Vecna Lives! out of my skull and I’ve used that effect in several homebrew adventures of my own for other systems. It’s too good NOT to crib.
Vecna Lives! is one of my favorite adventures from Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and I’m ecstatic that it’s been made available on DNDClassics.com. Even if you never play the adventure, you should go out of your way to read/download/borrow it just to see what an incredible example of storytelling and adventure writing it is. It’s too bad Greyhawk was eclipsed by basically every other campaign setting TSR had out for 2e at the time, because a lot of gamers missed out on this amazing experience. Now if only we could get the OTHER Vecna adventures for digital distribution, I’d be a very happy man indeed.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/29/dungeon-crawl-classics-
75-the-sea-queen-escapes/
Every gamer, regardless of medium, shudders at the thought of a water level, and they do it with good reason. Wading through water that slows you down, trying to swim down and back up before you drown and fighting in water, all of these elements are present in this adventure.
Half a century ago the wizard Shadankin befriended the seas and oceans and all its inhabitants. He never sought to rule, merely to discover and increase his knowledge of life beneath the waves. But not all is what it seems under the calm of the sea. Dangerous entities constantly seeks entrance to this realm, and their reward is maybe too much to ignore, and so Shadankin had to take measures. Gathering allies from the mighty oceans, Shadankin created a prison, but the prison is breaking. A beautiful queen reaches out the heroes and cries for release. And so the story begins.
That being said, this adventure made for Level 3 characters is classically designed. The environments are creative and something new for those that usually do normal dungeon crawls. The artwork is what you are used to from Goodman Games, and as always reflects the retro-feel of DCC. The maps especially are beautiful and imaginative.
The author, Michael Curtis, is a competent writer, but spread throughout the text complicated words and long names appear. Regardless of how much fun it is to see trapezoids used outside the context of a classroom, it doesn’t really add anything to the narrative, or the exposition. Describing a surface as “isosceles trapezoid” will only create confused looks on your player’s faces.
The Sea Queen Escapes relies heavily on the usual fantasy tropes, and the more ‘specialized’ ones regarding oceanic adventures. A beautiful royalty reaches out for help, her only hope. The heroes must travel to shores unknown and discover the true purpose of their visions. Because of all this the underlying story is filled with clichés. This doesn’t have to be bad. There is a reason something becomes a cliché, it answers to universal thoughts and feelings. The story is highly adaptable, but can easily stand on its own well-defined webbed feet. There is of course a small twist at the end, but I’ll keep that for myself for now.
All in all, I liked it. I would however change things up a little before running it with my group, but that’s the beauty of all the OGL material being published. You can twist, turn and refurbish anything to suit your needs, and The Sea Queen Escapes will definitely see some action in one form or another in my group.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/24/tabletop-review-the-god
-machine-chronicle-world-of-darkness/
With some many games getting new rules sets this year like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Tunnels and Trolls, and so on, World of Darkness’ The God Machine Chronicle may have slipped past your radar, especially since it’s tucked away under a very peculiar name. There are two parts to The God Machine Chronicle. The first is 149 pages that reveal the God Machine and a corresponding twenty or so adventures and principal NPCs to go with it. The other 100 pages are a rules update to the New World Of Darkness as opposed to the OLD World of Darkness. Some of these rules are minor cosmetic changes, while some really change the way the game is played. If you’re ONLY interested in the changes to the core game rules, you can get those separately as a 104 page PDF for FREE. Yes that’s right – for free. Go right now and download it. You have no excuse not to. However, if you do choose to go that route, you are missing out on the most compelling and creepy adventure collection I’ve encountered since Chaosium first released Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express. Yes, The God Machine Chronicle is that amazing. Between this release and my beloved Mummy: The Curse, I think the Storyteller System has become THE frontrunner for our System of the Year award. Will it still be at the end of the year? Only time will tell…
The free rules update is where all the rule changes and revisions for the New World of Darkness can be found. It’s roughly a hundred pages long, which may be intimidating to some of you, especially those of you who already have the old rules memorized (along with probably half a dozen other RPG systems), but the good news is that most of the changes are small subtle ones. It does seem odd and ill-placed to tuck the rule changes in the back of an adventure collection where the rules are totally turned on their head and are far less tangible than they’ve ever been before, but think of it as a bonus. After all, you can get the rules for free in a separate PDF, so it’s not like they’re forcing you to purchase these if all you want to do is play a game of V:TR and you have no intention of ever touching the God Machine. So…a hundred pages of rule changes, revisions and clarifications. Man, how does one begin to cover all of that? We’ll try though by talking about the most important bits.
Character creation is mostly the same. The big thing you’ll see right away is that it doesn’t cost you two dots to purchase a level five Attribute, Skill or Merit. Awesome! I think a lot of people ignored this rule anyway though. Aspirations, Virtues and Vices are now more open ended instead of “pick from a list,” which allows for more creative freedom. They have added two new merits that can be obtained if a Player regularly plays his Virtue over his Vice or well…vice versa (no pun intended). I think this is a great idea and it rewards a player for playing his character instead of going, “Oh I got my Willpower bonus from one, better do the other now.” You’re basically trading a short term disadvantage for a long term bonus via a free two point Merit. I like that. Morality has been replaced by Integrity, which will probably split people down on the middle on whether they like it or not. I see the positive and negative in both although honestly, for most people they are close to the same in terms of real world concepts. What I do like is that Integrity is more akin to the Sanity aspect of other horror games and when you risk losing Integrity you also risk incurring a Breaking Point, which is when your character’s ability to understand and/or rationalize what is going on around them goes out the window along with the winged firebreathing sloth they just saw. Breaking Points replace the concept of Sin in the New World of Darkness which I greatly approve of. Breaking Points are tailored to specific characters and it also gets rid of a lot of the baggage that came with the term “Sin” as well as applying it. I mean, if you’re an unrepentant serial killer are you really going to “sin?” But I digress. Break Points gives both players and Storytellers an excuse/need to really flesh out a PC’s back story and also define what are their trigger stressors. It might be hard to do these at first, especially if you are new to tabletop game, but for those that enjoy the story aspect of role-playing over dice hucking, this is no doubt a welcome change from the old rules.
Experience Points gets a massive overhaul though. Character progression is now more linear and standardized instead of level that you want times X number = how many experience points you need to purchase it. That’s a big change because everything costs far less XP now that it used to. 1XP nets you a dot of a merit, Skill Speciality or Willpower point. 2XP is a dot of a skill. 3XP is a dot of Integrity and 4XP is a dot of an attribute. Crazy cheap, huh? However, this is balanced out by how you earn experience. Basically you now earn “Beats” and five Beats equals ONE Experience Point. You earn a Beat (or “Take a Beat” in actual game terms) in various ways. Through achieving an Aspiration, experiencing a Dramatic Failure, recognizing a specific plot point or having a significant character experience are just a few examples. I was surprised hitting a Breaking Point wasn’t one of the ways listed though. So people are either going to love or hate this. My big problem with the new Experience System is that it may be too nebulous for a lot of people to make work. In the hands of a person that really gets the new rule changes and also knows his players well, this will be quite a good change. In the hands of others though…the potential for this to be a train wreck is pretty obvious to anyone who reads this section.
Merit are given an entire list of what is now in the game. Some Merits are gone but that is because they were found redundant or reworked. Other than that, it’s pretty unchanged. The Sanctity of Merits section is well worth reading though. Flaws are replaced by Conditions though and are less permanent than the original concept. Conditions can go away if the circumstances are right. Longer lasting Conditions are known as Permanent Conditions. They also aren’t necessarily negative (99.99% are though) and unlike Flaws, they can be obtained through simple roleplaying. For example, a Breaking Point can cause a Condition but so can an exceptional success. The Conditions list is far smaller than the Merits one, but there is also a section on designing Conditions for your players and characters so it is more open ended and flexible.
One thing I DON’T care for is the concept of Soul Loss and the mechanics behind it. This is something I feel should be done through role-playing only. The rules and the mechanics are badly defined and there’s no actual description of how one moves from one stage to the next. So basically you have specific rules for each stage but absolutely no rules for how they occur. This is a wasted concept that didn’t need mechanics at all.
A lot of the die roll stuff such as Extended Actions, Dramatic Failures and the like make a lot of sense and honestly aren’t that different from how you’ve probably used the Storyteller system before. Really everything in these sections is just shoring up the slow subtle changes made over the past decade and putting them in one concrete block. The Social Maneuvering section is similar. It’s far more in-depth than in the past with these rules, adding more possibilities and explanations rather than changing how things work. The truth is, most people I know that play WoD games (both old and new) tend to role-play these out rather than roll-play them out, so I was surprised to see how long this section was but also glad to see that it very rarely made mention of dice rolling or specific mechanics.
Combat has some slight changes, but it’s mainly optional rules and expansions of what you already know. I don’t mean to underestimate the changes that are here, but most of it really is intuitive and has slowly been implemented over the last few years anyway. The combat summary chart is well done and helpful to players of all experience levels. Tilts are probably the thing that will be the most new or unheard of those, but that is only because they were introduced in Danse Macabre for Vampire: The Requiem and thus if you only play, say, Forsaken or Mummy, these are probably new to you. Basically Tilts are Combat specific Conditions. They can be either personal (broken arm, temporary blinded) or environmental (sandstorm, blizzard). Again, these are all thing you’ve probably done instinctively or made up rules for on the fly at some point, but it’s nice to have them grouped together in one spot.
For Ghosts and other Ephemeral beings, rules from various (sometimes contradictory) books are combined and unified into one system. There are seventeen pages of rules just for ghosts, spirits, angels and the like, so fans of using or playing ghosts will see their world change the most. To be honest though, with all the rules for Twilight, Wraiths and the like spread across multiple books, this was a long time coming. The book then ends with a collection of new pieces of equipment for characters of all walks of life to use.
All in all the rules changes aren’t huge ones and as always, Storytellers and their troupe of gamers can ignore the changes or stick to the old way of doing things. I’d say the vast majority of edits and replacements are for the better. The problem will be getting people to use and/or remember the changes, especially if they assumed The God Machine Chronicle was just well…God Machine related.
All in all, The God Machine Chronicle is incredible. The basic premise is fantastic and one of the best things to come out of the New World of Darkness. It’s been sitting untouched more or less since what, 2004 and it’s nice to see something come of it. The adventures are fantastic, easily the best collection I think I’ve ever see White Wolf/Onyx Path Publishing put out (but then, how often do they actually DO collections instead of individual adventures). I went into this expecting something I could take or leave, and I came away being more impressed by this book than anything else I’ve read since the start of the New World of Darkness save for Mummy. If you’re a fan of either WoD, you really should pick this up as you’ll enjoy the writing even if your friends want nothing to do with playing the adventures or concepts contained herein. Hell, even if you’re not a Storyteller System gamer, any horror games should pick this up and devour it as there is so much to enjoy here. The lessons and stories this book holds can be applied to anything from say, Don’t Look Back to All Flesh Must Be Eaten. The Rules Update isn’t as big a deal as some have made it out to be in either extreme. Story trumps rules after all. I can’t heartily recommend this enough and honestly, between this, Mummy and Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition I haven’t been this excited for the World of Darkness as a whole since the mid 1990s. Just an amazing job in every way and I would love to see another, albeit more fleshed out, adventure collective just like this one in the future.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/24/tabletop-review-the-god
-machine-chronicle-world-of-darkness/
With some many games getting new rules sets this year like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Tunnels and Trolls, and so on, World of Darkness’ The God Machine Chronicle may have slipped past your radar, especially since it’s tucked away under a very peculiar name. There are two parts to The God Machine Chronicle. The first is 149 pages that reveal the God Machine and a corresponding twenty or so adventures and principal NPCs to go with it. The other 100 pages are a rules update to the New World Of Darkness as opposed to the OLD World of Darkness. Some of these rules are minor cosmetic changes, while some really change the way the game is played. If you’re ONLY interested in the changes to the core game rules, you can get those separately as a 104 page PDF for FREE. Yes that’s right – for free. Go right now and download it. You have no excuse not to. However, if you do choose to go that route, you are missing out on the most compelling and creepy adventure collection I’ve encountered since Chaosium first released Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express. Yes, The God Machine Chronicle is that amazing. Between this release and my beloved Mummy: The Curse, I think the Storyteller System has become THE frontrunner for our System of the Year award. Will it still be at the end of the year? Only time will tell…
So what IS The God Machine Chronicle? Well it’s hard to explain –partly because I don’t want to spoil the journey for those of you taking the time to read this and partly because the game goes out of its way NOT to define the God Machine. I know, for those of you who are long time White Wolf fans, the fact they managed to keep something nebulous and vague is either a miracle or a sign the apocalypse is at hand. For those that aren’t aware of what I mean, White Wolf, in the Old World of Darkness was notorious for pinning everything down, giving specific exact canon reasons for everything as soon as a mystery or group that was open to interpretation came into being. There was no sense of the unexplained and thus a lot of the potential for horror and mystery went out the window with it. I loved the settings and system but when you’re told every last detail about the Black Hand, Inconnu, Sabbat and so on AND these details are published repeatedly so that any player can get their hands on them easily, well, you couldn’t really establish a sense of foreboding or dread. It was more or less Chill from the POV of the monsters.
So what IS the God Machine? I know, didn’t we just ask that? Well the best way I can describe it is how I interpreted it, which is automatically wrong and yet completely correct for no being or even group of beings can truly fathom the God Machine. However, I’ll take a stab at it. First, take one part Hellraiser mythology distilled with the pure essence of Clive Barker – that being a strange machine-like god being (Leviathan) that is never fully described or understood, even by its own followers which are strange beings that occasionally offer a semblance of man (perhaps even once were human) but beat to a drum we can neither hear nor fathom. The Angels of the God Machine also are similar to the Cenobites of Barker’s mythology – but more their original form in The Hellbound Heart where their nature and purpose was never given any true depth, leaving you with a sense of “Why are they doing this?” and thus heightening the creep factor. Then take the mood and atmosphere of Call of Cthulhu where the players characters begin to realize that they are bit players in Existence itself and that in the shadows and underbelly of our planet lurk things our mind was not meant to understand. Things that neither bear us malice nor kindness. We are merely fleas to them and if the flea bites, well there are ways to get rid of it without passing a second thought on the subject. Feelings of helplessness, doom, and paranoia are commonplace amongst the PCs and the question becomes not, “Will the PCs win the day?” but, “How long can they stave off their own destruction?” or “How much of a difference can an ant colony make when someone decides they really want to kick it down or fry it with a magnifying glass?” Next add a portion of the Technocracy from Mage: The Awakening with its multiple factions severing a high purpose (in this case the God Machine) but with different groups interpreting the best way to achieve said goal in fundamentally different ways, perhaps even utterly contradictory to another. These would be the secret societies and cults that serve the God Machine, although in the case of this, said groups are sometimes PURPOSELY given orders that put each other in conflict. Indeed, for me, The God Machine felt very much like the early games of Mage we used to play run through a Black Dog set of glasses. Finally add a bit of comic books style magical realism. Think 90s Vertigo comics. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. ESPECIALLY Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. In this regard you have heroes and villains alike serving a higher purpose – oftentimes unaware that their actions are being subtly guided by a higher force that is able to manipulate reality in ways that would drive most people mad if they thought such a thing was truly possible. Add these four things together (maybe a little of 2001: A Space Odyssey for good measure) and you have the closest I can come to describing the God Machine. It’s not good or evil, lawful or chaotic. It simply runs according to its own plan – a plan that will never be even partially revealed to players or Storytellers and doing so would only be folly and an insult to the very concept of the God Machine.
Whew. That was one long paragraph. Basically the God Machine is the answer to most horror Storyteller/Keeper/GM’s dreams. It is a nigh omnipotent/omnipotent…thing that will never be fully described, shown or explained. This not only gives the Storyteller unparalleled freedom to shape the God Machine in whatever form he or she sees fit, but in trying to discern more about WHAT the God Machine IS, simply makes the God Machine pay more attention to the PCs, eventually bringing about their own demise or perhaps even causing them to become one with the Machine. A “cog” if you will. Note that the God Machine doesn’t have to be an antagonist to the PCs. In fact, you could run an entire campaign without the players ever encountering actual evidence of its existence. One adventure could have the PCs working for the machine (directly or indirectly) and the next having them be a roadblock in the Machine’s path. It’s so utterly flexible and because the God Machine’s plans are so alien they can’t be described or understood, even by the Storyteller, you have no worries regarding contradiction in its behavior or any shift you might need to do to the game’s mechanics in order to further the feel of the tale being told. In a sense, The God Machine Chronicle is a rules lawyering min/max’ers worst nightmare and a horror Storyteller’s pipe dream come true – a truly indescribable concept that won’t be bogged down by stats, mechanics, dice rolls or in canon descriptions. Now that doesn’t mean you won’t be rolling your d10s en masse like you always have with a Storyteller System game. Just that rules might change according to the God Machine’s whim.
The God Machine Chronicle gives us an introduction, three chapters and the Rules Appendix. The introduction runs twenty pages and it gives us the mood and theme of a world plagued/blessed by the God Machine. If your World of Darkness contains the God Machine then realize you have something that even supernatural characters are unaware of and should even fear. Sure you might be able to turn into a bat or cast some magic, but what happens if the God Machine throws a few angels at you or offers you the powers that give you the leg up in your every day in exchange for what feels like a rather mundane task. Would a vampire trade a month of not having the hunger in them for simply sticking three woodchucks in an old abandoned farmhouse. WHAT HARM COULD OCCUR FROM THAT? Conversely what do you do if you piss off the machine and suddenly you find that it’s not silver that causes you aggravated damage but cotton? So on and so forth. The core of the introduction is to make it clear that WW/OPP will not be fully fleshing out or defining the God Machine and the true joy/horror of experience a God Machine focused chronicle is that you will NEVER understand it fully and that should drive players and their characters nuts because THEY WANT TO KNOW and there is no actual answer. You’ve given multiple examples of those that fear the God Machine, those that serve it, those who have an intellectual curiosity about it and those that fight against it. In each category you have those that have justifiable reasons and those that are obviously in the wrong when looked at objectively. This contradiction only serves to muddy the water more and make the only certain about the God Machine is that nothing is for certain.
The intro also begins to define Infrastructure, which is the way the God Machine goes about its planning and projects. It gives you a bit of a flowchart in which to design the bizarre things that occur both because of and in spite of its actions. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Intro points out in no uncertain terms that the God Machine is not 100% omnipresent and omnipotent, because what fun is it in playing a game where the God Machine can do anything and stop any action the PCs take? It then becomes Storyteller vs Player and that never ends well. Instead think of the God Machine a la Cthulhu. Both are insanely powerful and SEEM unstoppable and all powerful in every way, but they don’t always win. Sure they probably will win the long game, but humans don’t think that far or in those terms. Both are also utterly alien to our thought process so trying to make them evil or 100% out to do terrible things to humanity just because is not only a disservice to those concepts, but also greatly ethnocentric on the part of the person writing/running those type of adventures because honestly, how often do YOU think about the microscopic bacteria you have on your skin every day?
Chapter 1 is “Building the God Machine Chronicle” and is all about the Storyteller’s role. How can you use the God Machine as a powerful unfathomable THING yet still give the PCs a chance to win and/or survive the adventure? You’ll find it here. The chapter also defines tiers (first seen in the nWoD’s version of Hunter) which are used to help a Storyteller craft their adventure. These tiers range from a local occurrence to a global event. You’re also given some rudimentary organizations that may work as antagonists for the tier you are using. It then goes into advice on how to run a God Machine adventure, chronicle or campaign. This is wonderful stuff for beginning and intermediate Storytellers and even long time veterans will pick up a few things along the way. By the end you should know what tale you want to tell, the number of sessions and adventures it will take to unfold and the right number of players to make it happen. They key is to remember that just because you are using the God Machine to not have it squash the characters instantly and utterly. Otherwise what’s the point of playing the game? The chapter ends with suggested story arcs for the Storyteller. It gives you several different overall themes and then creates a connection between multiple adventures that you’ll find in Chapter Two. It’s a bit odd to see the book talk about the adventures and ways to group them into a cohesive experience before you even read the adventures, but for once this does not feel like the typical bad layout and flow we’ve come to know with WoD publications, but rather a fine example of the disconnect and weirdness you’ll feel playing a God Machine chronicle. I really loved seeing how the premade adventures can fit into different themed story arcs and connect to other adventures in very different ways. Sure some connections are harder to justify than others, but the book acknowledges that. In the end, Chapter One will give you so many ideas of what to do with a God Machine, your head should be ready to burst from the adventures you want to run/write/play.
Chapter Two, “Tales of the God Machine,” is where all your adventures live. They aren’t grouped by Tier or any of the potential story arcs listed in Chapter One. They are also not listed in alphabetical order. They’re just kind of thrown together in no real order, which is fine as it fits the mood of the game but will make it hard for Storytellers to find the adventure they want to run without using post-it notes or Ctrl+F in a digital copy. There are twenty different adventures here. Now they’re not fully fleshed out to allow Storytellers the chance to modify them to their own vision. What is here is laid out wonderfully with seven different sections. You have the title and summary section which well, I don’t think I need to explain that to you. You have Infrastructure which lays out the overall story and why things are occurring in the way they are. You have Interchangeable Parts which shows how the characters fit into the story, the background they should probably have and how they can affect things. Blueprints gives insight into what the God Machine wants to happen and how it is going about achieving those goals in this instance. Linchpins are ways the God Machine is not infallible in these adventures and gives characters a way to defeat its Machinations. Methods gives you examples of ways to use your character sheet to get through the adventurer or at least advance the plot. Escalation gives you the climax of the adventure and the way things can unfold. The layout for these adventures is wonderful. Any Storyteller, regardless of experience, should be able to run one of these smoothly by following the format. It reminds me a lot of the Shadowrun Missions layout and while not as good as what Catalyst Game Labs does with those, they’re also single adventures while The God Machine Chronicle crams TWENTY DIFFERENT ONES into this chapter. I really hope this becomes the standard for how we see adventures laid out in World of Darkness adventures, albeit it a bit more fleshed out, because this format is so inviting to newcomers while extremely helpful to veterans as well. Awesome job.
The content of the adventures will vary based on what you want out of the God Machine. There are some adventures I fell instantly in love with and some I knew I would never use. The key is that ALL of them are well written and showcase the multifaceted nature of the God Machine. These things are weird, dark, exciting, freaky and most of all memorable. Obviously I don’t have room to review each adventure separately as we’ve just hit the 2,600 word mark but if you would like me to in another piece, by all means, I’ll consider it – just let me know. What you need to know is that all twenty adventures are worth reading even if you don’t play through them because of the insight you’ll gain regarding making God Machine based adventures of your own. I can’t think of the last time I’ve seen an adventure collection that blew me away this consistently. With a price tag of only $17.99, that means you are paying less than a dollar per adventure and that doesn’t even factor in the rules changes and the rest of the book. That alone should have you thrusting a fistful of money at Rich and his team demanding them to take it. I honestly can’t think of a better deal in gaming. Even if you don’t play games in the New World of Darkness. Even if you only play something like Earthdawn or Traveller, you should get this book just to read it. It is that well written and it’s an experience unlike any other. I can’t emphasize enough how this chapter alone is worth your money and the fact you’re getting so much more on top of it means I honestly can’t fathom why someone wouldn’t pick this up and more importantly, why they wouldn’t enjoy it.
Chapter Three is called “The Cogs in the Machine” and there’s not much to say here. This is a list of NPCs that work for or fight against the God Machine in a myriad of ways. Most of them are tied to specific adventures in Chapter Two, but a few are there just to have to write your own adventures around them. This chapter is what it is and the use you will get out of it pertains more or less to the use you get out of Chapter Two. In this chapter you’ll meet angels, mortals gone mad and a living oil rig.
Now we come to the Appendix which is where all the rule changes and revisions for the New World of Darkness can be found. It’s roughly a hundred pages long, which may be intimidating to some of you, especially those of you who already have the old rules memorized (along with probably half a dozen other RPG systems), but the good news is that most of the changes are small subtle ones. It does seem odd and ill-placed to tuck the rule changes in the back of an adventure collection where the rules are totally turned on their head and are far less tangible than they’ve ever been before, but think of it as a bonus. After all, you can get the rules for free in a separate PDF, so it’s not like they’re forcing you to purchase these if all you want to do is play a game of V:TR and you have no intention of ever touching the God Machine. So…a hundred pages of rule changes, revisions and clarifications. Man, how does one begin to cover all of that? We’ll try though by talking about the most important bits.
Character creation is mostly the same. The big thing you’ll see right away is that it doesn’t cost you two dots to purchase a level five Attribute, Skill or Merit. Awesome! I think a lot of people ignored this rule anyway though. Aspirations, Virtues and Vices are now more open ended instead of “pick from a list,” which allows for more creative freedom. They have added two new merits that can be obtained if a Player regularly plays his Virtue over his Vice or well…vice versa (no pun intended). I think this is a great idea and it rewards a player for playing his character instead of going, “Oh I got my Willpower bonus from one, better do the other now.” You’re basically trading a short term disadvantage for a long term bonus via a free two point Merit. I like that. Morality has been replaced by Integrity, which will probably split people down on the middle on whether they like it or not. I see the positive and negative in both although honestly, for most people they are close to the same in terms of real world concepts. What I do like is that Integrity is more akin to the Sanity aspect of other horror games and when you risk losing Integrity you also risk incurring a Breaking Point, which is when your character’s ability to understand and/or rationalize what is going on around them goes out the window along with the winged firebreathing sloth they just saw. Breaking Points replace the concept of Sin in the New World of Darkness which I greatly approve of. Breaking Points are tailored to specific characters and it also gets rid of a lot of the baggage that came with the term “Sin” as well as applying it. I mean, if you’re an unrepentant serial killer are you really going to “sin?” But I digress. Break Points gives both players and Storytellers an excuse/need to really flesh out a PC’s back story and also define what are their trigger stressors. It might be hard to do these at first, especially if you are new to tabletop game, but for those that enjoy the story aspect of role-playing over dice hucking, this is no doubt a welcome change from the old rules.
Experience Points gets a massive overhaul though. Character progression is now more linear and standardized instead of level that you want times X number = how many experience points you need to purchase it. That’s a big change because everything costs far less XP now that it used to. 1XP nets you a dot of a merit, Skill Speciality or Willpower point. 2XP is a dot of a skill. 3XP is a dot of Integrity and 4XP is a dot of an attribute. Crazy cheap, huh? However, this is balanced out by how you earn experience. Basically you now earn “Beats” and five Beats equals ONE Experience Point. You earn a Beat (or “Take a Beat” in actual game terms) in various ways. Through achieving an Aspiration, experiencing a Dramatic Failure, recognizing a specific plot point or having a significant character experience are just a few examples. I was surprised hitting a Breaking Point wasn’t one of the ways listed though. So people are either going to love or hate this. My big problem with the new Experience System is that it may be too nebulous for a lot of people to make work. In the hands of a person that really gets the new rule changes and also knows his players well, this will be quite a good change. In the hands of others though…the potential for this to be a train wreck is pretty obvious to anyone who reads this section.
Merit are given an entire list of what is now in the game. Some Merits are gone but that is because they were found redundant or reworked. Other than that, it’s pretty unchanged. The Sanctity of Merits section is well worth reading though. Flaws are replaced by Conditions though and are less permanent than the original concept. Conditions can go away if the circumstances are right. Longer lasting Conditions are known as Permanent Conditions. They also aren’t necessarily negative (99.99% are though) and unlike Flaws, they can be obtained through simple roleplaying. For example, a Breaking Point can cause a Condition but so can an exceptional success. The Conditions list is far smaller than the Merits one, but there is also a section on designing Conditions for your players and characters so it is more open ended and flexible.
One thing I DON’T care for is the concept of Soul Loss and the mechanics behind it. This is something I feel should be done through role-playing only. The rules and the mechanics are badly defined and there’s no actual description of how one moves from one stage to the next. So basically you have specific rules for each stage but absolutely no rules for how they occur. This is a wasted concept that didn’t need mechanics at all.
A lot of the die roll stuff such as Extended Actions, Dramatic Failures and the like make a lot of sense and honestly aren’t that different from how you’ve probably used the Storyteller system before. Really everything in these sections is just shoring up the slow subtle changes made over the past decade and putting them in one concrete block. The Social Maneuvering section is similar. It’s far more in-depth than in the past with these rules, adding more possibilities and explanations rather than changing how things work. The truth is, most people I know that play WoD games (both old and new) tend to role-play these out rather than roll-play them out, so I was surprised to see how long this section was but also glad to see that it very rarely made mention of dice rolling or specific mechanics.
Combat has some slight changes, but it’s mainly optional rules and expansions of what you already know. I don’t mean to underestimate the changes that are here, but most of it really is intuitive and has slowly been implemented over the last few years anyway. The combat summary chart is well done and helpful to players of all experience levels. Tilts are probably the thing that will be the most new or unheard of those, but that is only because they were introduced in Danse Macabre for Vampire: The Requiem and thus if you only play, say, Forsaken or Mummy, these are probably new to you. Basically Tilts are Combat specific Conditions. They can be either personal (broken arm, temporary blinded) or environmental (sandstorm, blizzard). Again, these are all thing you’ve probably done instinctively or made up rules for on the fly at some point, but it’s nice to have them grouped together in one spot.
For Ghosts and other Ephemeral beings, rules from various (sometimes contradictory) books are combined and unified into one system. There are seventeen pages of rules just for ghosts, spirits, angels and the like, so fans of using or playing ghosts will see their world change the most. To be honest though, with all the rules for Twilight, Wraiths and the like spread across multiple books, this was a long time coming. The book then ends with a collection of new pieces of equipment for characters of all walks of life to use.
All in all the rules changes aren’t huge ones and as always, Storytellers and their troupe of gamers can ignore the changes or stick to the old way of doing things. I’d say the vast majority of edits and replacements are for the better. The problem will be getting people to use and/or remember the changes, especially if they assumed The God Machine Chronicle was just well…God Machine related.
All in all, The God Machine Chronicle is incredible. The basic premise is fantastic and one of the best things to come out of the New World of Darkness. It’s been sitting untouched more or less since what, 2004 and it’s nice to see something come of it. The adventures are fantastic, easily the best collection I think I’ve ever see White Wolf/Onyx Path Publishing put out (but then, how often do they actually DO collections instead of individual adventures). I went into this expecting something I could take or leave, and I came away being more impressed by this book than anything else I’ve read since the start of the New World of Darkness save for Mummy. If you’re a fan of either WoD, you really should pick this up as you’ll enjoy the writing even if your friends want nothing to do with playing the adventures or concepts contained herein. Hell, even if you’re not a Storyteller System gamer, any horror games should pick this up and devour it as there is so much to enjoy here. The lessons and stories this book holds can be applied to anything from say, Don’t Look Back to All Flesh Must Be Eaten. The Rules Update isn’t as big a deal as some have made it out to be in either extreme. Story trumps rules after all. I can’t heartily recommend this enough and honestly, between this, Mummy and Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition I haven’t been this excited for the World of Darkness as a whole since the mid 1990s. Just an amazing job in every way and I would love to see another, albeit more fleshed out, adventure collective just like this one in the future.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/23/tabletop-review-monster
-focus-mummies-pathfinder/
I love Mummies. From the most recent New World of Darkness setting, Mummy: The Curse, to the occasional antagonist in Call of Cthulhu down to Ankhtepot, a Darklord of Ravenloft, mummies are some fo the coolest and most underutilized undead in tabletop gaming – mainly because most GMs and writers don’t know what to do with them aside from the occasional curse or bad horror motif. Minotaur Games appears to feel the same way as I do as their latest Monster Focus release attempts to breathe new life into Mummies – at least via the Pathfinder setting. Does it succeed? Let’s take a look.
First up – although the PDF is six pages long, one and a half pages are devoted to the cover and the license agreement, knocking the actual content count down to four and a half. It’s not much but it’s more than has been written on Pathfinder or OGL mummies in eons. I can’t say I’m a fan of the art in this piece. It’s better than I personally can do, but it’s not what I’d expect to see in a published professional release, you know?
Unfortunately, Monster Focus: Mummies doesn’t actually do anything to reinvent the wheel. They stick hard and fast to the tropes of fantasy gaming mummies that we’ve seen since early Dungeons & Dragons. So for those of you looking perhaps to have a more historically accurate mummy in your Pathfinder game or at least one that doesn’t curse PCs and wither them via Mummy Rot, you won’t find it here. What you will find are odds and ends to beef up your PCs AGAINST mummy antagonists as well as vice versa. I applaud the latter but jeer the former. Like we need even more ways for PCs to have a specific advantage over a niche creature. This supplement includes the following:
•A DC for Knowledge (Religion) check and what a PC might know about the bandaged dead.
•Four new feats – none of which are that exciting. One adds to a slam attack (which most Mummies don’t use anyway). Another gives Curse Resistance, which is better suited to PCs than Mummies (who cast curses) and something I dislike seeing. Why give a PC a specific feat that is only useful against Mummies and Vistani really? This is space that could have been used to make the Mummy more interesting rather than limit its threat and mystique when PCs encounter it. A third increases the intensity of Mummy Rot (which has been done before as far back as Third Edition D&D) and the other is Ward Off, which allows you to repel someone ala Turn Undead (fleeing rather than destroying). This last one again doesn’t make sense to have in a book for mummies and it also dilutes the Cleric’s trademark ability, which is a red flag and shouldn’t have been included. Nothing especially interesting or even good here.
•Five Alchemical Items. These are more interesting and really well done – especially in comparison to the Feats. Embalming Oil is a nice touch, as are Sacred Salts. Flaming Oil already existed so it was not needed here and although I’ve seen variants of the Censer and Incense, the write-ups are well done and will be useful to those who haven’t seen similar pieces in other supplements.
• Five new Spells. These are all quite interesting. Curse Charm is a Level 2 spell to give a PC a second roll when making a Saving Throw vs Curses. Again, not something I wanted to see as Curses are so rarely used as it is and it’s again a way to make PCs resist one of the few things that makes Mummies “special” in fantasy hack and slash gaming. It’s also lower leveled than I would like to see. I’d make it third level as an alternative to Remove Curse or a replacement for it altogether. Mummify is just weird and the name doesn’t fit the spell. It basically causes a long bandage to grapple and somehow dehydrate it chosen enemy. Sandblast is the most balanced spell of the lot, giving the caste an unexpected ranged attack that players (and NPCs) probably won’t expect. Since it does damage, blinding and pushes an enemy back with a failed save, I’d bump it up from a 2nd level spell to a 3rd level one. Scarab Swarm is Summon Swarm but with beetles and Wall of Sand is interesting and it basically an alternative to Wall of Wind. Thumbs in the middle here.
•Four new Magic Items – none of which are very interesting. Canopic Jars aren’t actually well, Canopic Jars as they are meant to be, but a portable Summon Swarm spell. Meh. There are already multiple cat versions of Figurines of Wondrous Power, so we didn’t really need a Basalt Cat as well. Mummy Charm is yet another thing in this PDF to give PCs crazy bonuses against curses and mummy rot so I shake my head at that. It also makes no sense why a there would be group from the time of mummies that would make something to inhibit their power. You didn’t see the Norse making Anti-Odin devices or Celts coming up with anti-Jesus devices. Finally we have the Scepter of the Ancients which…is a +1 Club that uses the Wall of Sand spell. I do at least like the Scepter’s ability to create a sand version of Ice Storm though. That shows some imagination.
•Three different traps for a Mummy’s tomb! Okay, I loved this. New traps are always fun and having some Mummy-centric ones is a great idea. All three definitely feel like they were ripped straight from a 1940s Universal horror film. One buries the PC alive in crushing sand. Another fills a room with flesh eating scarabs and the third are mechanics for the usual Mummy’s Curse regarding taking objects from a tomb.
•Three mummy variants. The ideas aren’t my cup of tea, but honestly, variants are really what the mummy needs (especially in Pathfinder) but these well…aren’t them. There’s not enough detail and the ideas simply aren’t very good. The Decrepit Mummy is simply a much weaker mummy. Yawn. The Mummy Priest is a weird throwback to AD&D 2nd Edition where it doesn’t actually have priest levels but a few spells. Unfortunately the OGL has had a true Mummy Priest variant since Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Just given a Mummy Priest levels ala Ravenloft. The last is the Shifting Mummy which is simply a Mummy that can turn into something else, say a swarm of scarabs. This too has been done before and could simply be done through a spell, so this isn’t really a variant, but a Spell Like Ability or something that would have been better off as a Feat.
•Three Adventure Threads. None of these are really out of the ordinary as they stick pretty close to the tropes Mummies have in a D&D style fantasy game. One involves a stolen artifact from a Mummy’s tomb and the curse it brings. Another has artifacts being stolen from various homes that turn out to be originally plundered from a Mummy’s tomb, so pretty close to the first seed. The final has a horde of mummies attacking a town for reasons that actually make sense to them instead of for EEEEVIL deeds. Now, playing to the classical mummy adventure is neither bad nor good. Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason. All three of these would make perfectly fine adventures, especially for younger gamers or those less familiar with mummies and/or role-playing. For those looking for something outside the box though, you won’t find it here.
All in all, this isn’t a bad PDF, but it’s not necessarily a good one either. There are some really fun ideas mixed in with really bad ones and so overall I’d call it an okay PDF. The problem is those who enjoy mummies in their OGL style system have probably found similar but better options and variants already. I think with more space to flesh out ideas and more of a focus on the monster rather than the PCs (especially in a series called Monster Focus), this would have potential. For now most mummy fans won’t find anything especially compelling in this piece to pick it up and most non-mummy fans won’t care enough to get it anyway.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/22/tabletop-review-ultimat
e-roman-legions-guide-legend/
This sourcebook is an historical compendium of information on the famous Roman armies during the height of their military power, roughly 30 BCE to about 290 CE. This version of the book is for Legend, a fantasy role=playing game from Mongoose Publishing based on RuneQuest. I am not familiar with Legend, but I thought I would take a look at this book anyway and see what it had to offer.
The Might of the Legions
While I have studied the Roman Empire in its later periods, I don’t know a lot about the age of military might and expansion that this volume covers. This is perhaps the period Rome is most famous for though, and the book seems to be pretty comprehensive and written from an authoritative and knowledgeable position. It starts off with a bit of flavor, a few pages of story to give the reader a feeling for the period and attitudes of the army. After some historical information, the book drops a list of gear consisting of weapons, armor, and siege weapons. Following that, details about the structure of the legion from ranks to unit organization are laid out with their Latin terms and meanings, along with a listing of known standing legions from the time.
Next up is an interesting and concise tactical guide detailing how the units would be arranged on the battlefield and their basic tactics. This sections has some nice diagrams letting the reader know how things were expected to progress, and what the physical arrangement might typically be when facing armies such as the Germanic tribes. A short section on life in the Roman legions gives the reader insight into what the typical soldier did and how they were seen in society. Along with these tidbits are sections on the structure of the transportation infrastructure, the menagerie of people that made up or followed the army around, political uses of the army, and then information on various emperors during the time period this book covers.
Playing Centurion
The last twenty or so pages of the book get to some stats, characters, and adventure seeds. This is the only portion of the book that is not purely historical information. You get a big list of character professions, some pre-generated characters, and some statted-out NPCs. After that, you have two adventures sketched out in a nice format, with names of pertinent people, the plot, etc. The first one involves investigating a senator for occult behavior,and the second one is a scouting mission where the players may have to make some tough moral choices when they contact barbarian tribes.
This is a well-presented volume and has a lot of concise information about the Roman armies during this period. The material is quite dry and has a textbook feel, but it does deliver the facts. There are full-page illustrations interspersed throughout, and there are some nice visual aids which are nice and colorful to appeal to people like me (I suppose). I think any game master looking to run a game or campaign in Roman times would find this quite useful and especially folks who may not be familiar with this historical period may enjoy the overview given of the troops, emperors, and major battles that occurred. This book does seem to focus on the conflicts with the Germanic tribes and seems to wholly ignore other forces that Rome’s legions faced such as the Sassanids, but this is not a definitive historical tome, it’s a game book. If you’re looking for a quick but thorough reference for your Roman history needs, this seems like a great book to pick up. It’s pretty cheap, and it can help you add authentic flavor to your game.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/20/tabletop-review-autorun
-generic-cyber-hacking-for-d20-modern/
I have a confession to make: I don’t play enough cyberpunk games. Still, I am familiar with the whole issue of one player (the “decker” generally) entering the realm of cyberspace while the rest of the party does something else. Split the party, split the game master’s attention, make it easier to lose track of stuff. Got it, I see the problem. What Autorun is trying to do is to help solve or minimize the issues that this causes at the table, by essentially introducing a mini-game that the decker(s) can play while everyone else is doing their stuff they need to do.
Plug In
The introductory material for this sourcebook indicates that it can be used with systems like D20 Modern or Pathfinder (Pathfinder…?), but of course, it can be hacked to work with anything. The only real stats have to do with the various anti-hacker programs and decker equipment that use Difficulty Class (“DC”), the rest is just conceptual. The book also makes some presumptions, like that I would be playing a game where players wait for turns, that I would be using tactical maps or battle mats, and it generally assumes a sort of typical Pathfinder play experience.
Setting up a hacking event with Autorun is pretty easy, there’s a one-page 8.5×11 hex map to print out that represents the virtual space. After that gets put out, some sort of marker is physically thrown onto the map to represent “code walls”, spaces the hacker can’t pass through. Then, depending on how strong the computer security is, a number of programs are placed on the Goal space of the mat, and the hacker is placed on the Home space on the other end. Basically, the hacker has to get through the code walls and malicious programs to reach the Goal space.
Ride the Wave of Computer Use Checks
When a hacker is trying to gain entry to the virtual space, and when the hacker wants to do various things inside the space like kill, evade, or subvert programs, he or she is going to need to make lots of checks against Computer Use, or whatever skill is analogous to that in the game that is being played. Programs move automatically toward the hacker in the most direct possible way, so he or she will likely end up having to tangle with them. The book provides lots of possible programs to run against the hacker, from the lowly and weak Basic Gremlin to the Dracula program; each one takes up a certain amount of slots, which are the available space of the computer system to host programs. When the player has programs in a hex next to them, they are going to suffer damage. This sounds a bit arbitrary to me, but whatever. As mentioned, players can try to either kill, subvert (so that the program attacks other programs), or evade the programs around them. Each time, they will need to roll Computer Use.
Once a hacker reaches the Goal space, that’s it! Balloons fall from the ceiling, prizes are won and the hacker achieves whatever they were trying to do inside the system.
Autorun seems geared toward a certain play style, but I think it’s definitely a neat idea. It’s certainly a quick, tactical game within a game. It has shortcomings, like the fact that it’s very two-dimensional when a lot of the cyberpunk fiction we read talks about flying in virtual space or doing other crazy stunts (like things we see in The Matrix). The hacker is more like a running-back trying to score a touchdown than a traveler of the virtual world or a distinct presence and personality in the realm of cyberspace. Speaking of distinct presence, one of the cool aspects about it is that you can (and are encouraged to) use figurines to represent your avatar, so your virtual representation can be any awesome figure you have lying around. I like that.
My nigglings are a bit beside the point, since the book is meant to simulate a specific function: the decker hacking a computer system for a specific goal. It might also be fun to use the cyber-map when playing out encounters in virtual space, like the Black Sun club in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. The author offers several twists and optional rules for the mini-game as well, such as additional obstacles, bigger maps, or Sys-Admins who take you on personally. There are also lists of gear, hacker abilities, and decks. All in all, a good supplement with lots of neat ideas and a nice full-color board you can print out for play.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/05/17/tabletop-review-the-gia
nt-a-dungeon-world-playbook/
DHGF: I recently played Dungeon World, a fantasy re-skin of Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker. There are some things I like about it, but I have to say it does feel a bit like 4th ed. Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe it was the scenario we played. The idea of “playbooks” is cool, as it makes character generation a breeze, and playing the game with a playbook in front of you makes it easy for you to access your moves and see what’s possible. In this review, I’m looking at a playbook for a giant. Not an “official” one, but a fan-made one.
Physical Characteristics
In general, the Giant is just like other characters – no big bonuses to strength or anything you might expect (there’s an explanation for this: the strength stat represents the Giant’s control over his might). However, there is a side effect to Giant strength: your “Larger Than Life” move gives you two successes AND two consequences when you succeed in it. So what can end up happening is you smash something and send something else across the room, but at the same time you can hurt somebody you didn’t mean to, and maybe even hurt yourself.
You can choose how big of a giant you are, and you can also choose your natural heritage. Essentially you can be at home among the forest, the hills, the snowy mountains, or you can be a bridge troll. Yep, somehow one of the Giant heritages can be of a bridge troll. With your heritage you get some special abilities that are magical in nature. For instance, as a “Jotun” you can freeze water and cool fire; as a “Treekin” you can make plants grow immediately to a huge size.
When You Grow Up
Your main move is the aforementioned “Larger Than Life”, but you’ve also got starting moves with magic, camouflage, eating, and throwing stuff. Advanced moves include “Gentle”, which can take consequences off of your “Larger Than Life” move; moves related to controlling your pet (there are pets?); “Mixed Heritage” allows you to choose another of the four heritages; you can even get “Colossus” that allows you to possibly smash a building when you succeed in your “Larger Than Life” roll. A lot of these advanced moves are really cool and powerful!
So, would I want to play the Giant? Absolutely. I don’t know about a dungeon crawl, but if there is going to be a lot of outdoor activity I would definitely like to use this playbook. This would be a great one to keep around for a cameo appearance every so often by the token Giant character. I mean, if one player is always a Giant the party might get a little overpowered, so I think pulling it out every so often makes more sense.
This is a good playbook, it’s thoughtful and has lots of influence from myths, legend, and standard fantasy. The Giant has the chance to be overpowered, but his or her main move is counterbalanced by the addition of consequences for everything the Giant does. I worry a bit about the “Gentle” advanced move which can completely remove the consequences from “Larger Than Life”, which in my view possibly makes the Giant lose its gameplay balance. I can see a player angling for that move and then just going nuts. Still, I think this playbook is well done and can provide a lot of fun at your table. The $2.50 price point seems a bit high, but if you’re not worried about cash then check it out!
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