Well sure this is a few weeks late, but welcome to my life, nigh impossible to schedule in the short term. So if you were looking to wait for this review as to whether to back the Kickstarter for 7th Sea, well, too bad. Of course there's now a pre-order button, so I guess all is not lost.
Overall
While the system has its rough spots that I will hope to get worked out in time, I enjoyed the mechanics of the system and it maintain the same feel of what the original edition tried to reach for, and frequently failed to do.
In the original system, it promised swashbuckling, over-the-top action in a dog's breakfast of faux-European countries. And while we got that, the Roll and Keep system, combined by the penalties of diversification of skills, as well as the heavy character point buy-in necessary for either playing with the main two systems (sword schools or sorcery), may entry level character rather ... challenging to get that feel that I, at least always wanted.
This edition seems to have stepped away from that - it ["steals"/is informed by/adapts] a lot of the meta-RPG stuff that has happened in the last 10 years - moving towards a more narrative feel in what is able to be accomplished by a character. Characters feel competent right out of the box, and while there may be some penalties for success, the potential for success is more likely.
Mechanics
The mechanics are fairly simple. Roll a bunch of d10s, group them so they add up to 10, each one is a success or raise, that may be spent for succeeding, buying an opportunity, or preventing a consequence. You can spend hero points to get more dice or activate certain advantages, as well as gain them for either voluntarily failing, or the GM taking advantage of your poor rolling.
While the system has its faults - over 10 dice and it starts being complicated and slows down dice arrangement, I like it in that it allows me to see a non-binary set of results potentially - opportunities allow me to say "yes, and", consequences allow me "yes, but" as my favorite two results (I suppose the player could also choose "I don't succeed, but I get these other opportunities" as well.
The warts were when trying to maximize the number of success with large dice pools. Dice pool games, in my experience, really shine at about the 6-8 dice range, too much more and you've got problems tracking all the dice in your hands. Too few and the results get really swingy.
However, the opportunities and consequences are what will really make the system sing in my opinion. Otherwise, there's no benefit to just not rolling versus a target number and getting a yes/no answer. I suppose I could do the same in a TN system, where I set a fairly low TN, and every 5/10 above is another success. But even then you get problems trying to add up many dice. I don't know if there is a good solution. Perhaps it'll be harder to get above 6-7 dice in a pool, or there will be other suggested speed bumps in the system.
Subsystems - Combat & Dueling
I figure I should call this out specifically. The quickstart game ran through all of the various systems in a fairly straightforward manner. The mass combat versus Brutes (i.e., mooks, unnamed NPCs) went fairly well. Large groups of mooks still have the ability to be a threat; however, we were discussing something like 30 Brutes against 3 players, and the players barely took any wounds. I almost want to think about some sort of Elite Brute so I could have only twice the number of NPCs as I do PCs and have it still be a good challenge versus needing a 10x the number of PCs.
The dueling system sufferings from the decker problem of role playing games. When we had our duel everything came to a hard stop. No one else could participate, no one else could really role play, and everything had to wait for the duelist to finish their duel. And the dueling rules were obtuse, not very intuitive, and frustrating to use. Now some of that is our newness to the system. Some of that is the fact that the quickstart rules really didn't explain dueling well, something I expect to be rectified.
However, as far as the duel itself goes - I don't see there a way around it being a dead stop. That's okay, we just need them to be quick, perhaps no more than 4-6 exchanges and move on. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen due to how the game presents Villains (named antagonists to the PCs). Any decent challenge to the PCs is going to be an ugly grind because of how they simplified the system.
Villains are rated from a rating from 1-Infinite, based on a number of two factors - their own personal ability and their influence. So you could have a badass with no influence being rated at a 8 (7/1), and a weak but influential manipulator also being an 8 (1/7). Both of these guys are the same danger in a duel, and also the same difficult to defeat - they both roll 8 dice in all challenges, and they can both take 8 hits before taking a dramatic wound and can take 8 dramatic wounds before being defeated.
And it is really this last part that is the killer - the difference between a Level 6 villain and a Level 8 Villain is minimal damage/success output change (6 dice versus 8 dice), but a difference between taking 36 hits versus 64 hits. Early 4th Edition D&D had this problem as well, where Solos would be able to take large amounts of damage, but not dish out a lot, turning fights into grind fests; however, it was fixed later as fights where you had 3-5 rounds, so large amounts of damage and more moderate HPs were found to be more fun.
I'm not sure how to modify. As one of my players noted, the system is designed well for a single bad guy and some Brutes taking on the PC group as a whole. However, when it is 1 on 1 in a duel, the warts definitely show. Hopefully the full version of the rules will take this into account, and I won't have to come up with something on my own.
Other Notable Subsystems - Villains and Intrigue
I wanted to note that there is a subsystem for "downtime" villain actions which can drive plot in and of itself. Villains will risk their intrigue to accomplish goals, which if the players react, they can reduce the villain's influence, and if they don't the Villain will get more powerful. The quickstart system doesn't play with that; however, so I'll just leave that here.
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Friday, September 4, 2015
Changing What I Skim To Review Later
I realized borrowing a copy of Edge of the Empire to take a look at, I realized that I've apparently gotten old - I would have used to read through the book cover to cover to get an idea of how the game ran, what it included and what it didn't include.
Not this time. This time? I quickly flipped to the skills section to read over the few skills I actually care about the resolution system resolves, then quickly checked the basics of the rules overview to confirm what I assumed the symbols meant. Then to combat, particularly vehicle combat to see how a Star Wars game handled that particular quirk.
And really? That's about it. The rest, I don't really care about. I mean if I was prepping for a game, sure I'd read everything and do the prep work, but my assumption is that the system is fairly solid as I haven't heard too much grumbling about it (other than the joys of reading a different set of coded dice) so I'll presume the system works, by and large, for what it needs to do.
So what's left? What's left is what I actually care about. How does it handle social interaction? How does it handle investigation? How does it handle shooting and getting shot?
One of my favorite players to game with is an amazing table top thespian. She handles just about any system or role, so I look for "how does it support her play style?" not because I always want her at my table gaming (though I do), but I want a system that supports that sort of character and does so in a way that I think she'd enjoy, plus most of the problems that the players will face at my table are generally social or intellectual, so I want the game to have the tools to help mechanically solve that.
Investigation is much the same - my games tend to a lot of "find some facts, figure out what to do about it," and I just want to know what I'm in for.
Finally combat - I like my combats to be no more than about 20 minutes, and everyone gets a few turns, so how does it flow, what sort of paralysis of choice sets in. I like there be at least a few interesting choices.
How did the game do?
The game as regards social resolution is does its job, it depends on the dice to provide the non-binary solution sets; however, I feel like I'd want to have the book open continually (or create a cheat sheet) for what you can spend the different results of the dice. But that may just be the price of one pays for having the dice provide complicated answers. There are a variety of social skills, so I can have characters who are variably good at a variety of skills, rather than having one member just be the face and be able to run off one or two skills.
The game as it handles investigation is funny - it has no investigation skill, which leads to some interesting choices - rather than defaulting to "Investigation", there are skills like "computer", "streetwise" as well as "perception" and "vigilance" for your more immediate needs. I could see this getting to be a headache if I wanted someone to do actual forensics, where we start defaulting to something else. I'd want to make a decision about what that something else was early, so people knew ahead of time.
Finally combat - combat seemed to be smooth enough. Initiative is a big quirky, but easy enough to handle. Limited number of actions, and taking unusual actions seems to be handled in a practical way of, "Well it isn't this, and it isn't that, so we'll call it this catch all." And reading the vehicular rules had me thinking of ways I could be starfighter pilot, so I'll call that a win.
So all in all the system looks like it does what I like - mechanically diverse and defined character creation, the oddball dice give me all of the "yes/no/sort of" results I'm looking for in my games these days, and it isn't modern horror or high fantasy so it would be a nice change of pace.
Not this time. This time? I quickly flipped to the skills section to read over the few skills I actually care about the resolution system resolves, then quickly checked the basics of the rules overview to confirm what I assumed the symbols meant. Then to combat, particularly vehicle combat to see how a Star Wars game handled that particular quirk.
And really? That's about it. The rest, I don't really care about. I mean if I was prepping for a game, sure I'd read everything and do the prep work, but my assumption is that the system is fairly solid as I haven't heard too much grumbling about it (other than the joys of reading a different set of coded dice) so I'll presume the system works, by and large, for what it needs to do.
So what's left? What's left is what I actually care about. How does it handle social interaction? How does it handle investigation? How does it handle shooting and getting shot?
One of my favorite players to game with is an amazing table top thespian. She handles just about any system or role, so I look for "how does it support her play style?" not because I always want her at my table gaming (though I do), but I want a system that supports that sort of character and does so in a way that I think she'd enjoy, plus most of the problems that the players will face at my table are generally social or intellectual, so I want the game to have the tools to help mechanically solve that.
Investigation is much the same - my games tend to a lot of "find some facts, figure out what to do about it," and I just want to know what I'm in for.
Finally combat - I like my combats to be no more than about 20 minutes, and everyone gets a few turns, so how does it flow, what sort of paralysis of choice sets in. I like there be at least a few interesting choices.
How did the game do?
The game as regards social resolution is does its job, it depends on the dice to provide the non-binary solution sets; however, I feel like I'd want to have the book open continually (or create a cheat sheet) for what you can spend the different results of the dice. But that may just be the price of one pays for having the dice provide complicated answers. There are a variety of social skills, so I can have characters who are variably good at a variety of skills, rather than having one member just be the face and be able to run off one or two skills.
The game as it handles investigation is funny - it has no investigation skill, which leads to some interesting choices - rather than defaulting to "Investigation", there are skills like "computer", "streetwise" as well as "perception" and "vigilance" for your more immediate needs. I could see this getting to be a headache if I wanted someone to do actual forensics, where we start defaulting to something else. I'd want to make a decision about what that something else was early, so people knew ahead of time.
Finally combat - combat seemed to be smooth enough. Initiative is a big quirky, but easy enough to handle. Limited number of actions, and taking unusual actions seems to be handled in a practical way of, "Well it isn't this, and it isn't that, so we'll call it this catch all." And reading the vehicular rules had me thinking of ways I could be starfighter pilot, so I'll call that a win.
So all in all the system looks like it does what I like - mechanically diverse and defined character creation, the oddball dice give me all of the "yes/no/sort of" results I'm looking for in my games these days, and it isn't modern horror or high fantasy so it would be a nice change of pace.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Night's Black Agents: A Ticking Bomb in the Ukraine (with mini review)
This past weekend I ran Night's Black Agents (NBA) for some friends at a small gaming convention. Now I've been interested in NBA for some time because it uses the Gumshoe system, and I have a thing for playing or running games involving characters that are assumed to be competent. While I want to play character that still can become more competent/skilled, I have grown to dislike the zero-to-hero model. From my experiences with NBA this past weekend, while I would have some learning pains with the game, I would definitely be willing to suffer through them while running or playing in a game. It runs fast, we rarely had any moments where someone couldn't do something, and even towards the end, when the chips were down, there were always options. And that's without using all of the options (it was a convention game, none of us had played the game before, so I wanted to cut down the number of the options we had to deal with).
Rather than running the short introductory scenario in the back of the book, I decided I would just run my own small creation because I wanted to see how much of a pain it was to create a scenario for the players, and deal with the power of the Investigative abilities. It isn't so much that I don't know how to handle basic clues, but a constant fear of mine would be coming up with useful information when a player spends a point to get enhanced information.
The scenario I presented was simple - a group of concerned actors had hired the fixer to provide a group of deniable assets to enter into the Separatist region of Ukraine, and intercept a suspected bio-weapon that had been obtain within the boundaries of Russia from a Romanian arms dealer. While it probably wasn't a Soviet era weapon (the lack of markings was a clear give-away) it was a too serious a threat to go away. So the group needed to get in, retrieve the weapon, the scientist traveling with the weapon, and get out. Preferably without getting on the evening news.
I had planned basically three basic stages - the meeting and getting into the region, finding the safe house and the assault, and the vampiric twist. After that I figured everything would have gone to hell, and why bother planning.
As it turned out, I was totally accurate in my assessment.
The PCs took the job, did some preliminary research and set-up, obtaining a TV van for a cover ID, and headed off across Ukraine. Being super spies, there was a montage of the group traveling and bribing various guards of the government and separatist factions.
Once arriving in Luhansk, they triangulated the cell signal to find where the hot headed rebel was hiding, and retasked a satellite to provide updated intel. Note: As the GM, I had absolutely no clue how they were going to find the safe house, I just trusted that they were going to find a way to do it.
And hey, that worked.
They assaulted the dacha, and that's when things started to go bad. Combat is rough, and I think I may have overly estimated their competence with killing things - I had expected the players to go combat heavy because it was a convention game, and well I think I had one universally deadly character, and one fairly deadly character, and everyone else apparently took the "if the guns come out, we've already fucked up, route." And I forgot to calibrate till halfway through the assault and turn the soldiers into mooks.
Though with how poorly the PCs rolled, there may have been no saving them ultimately. One of my players managed to roll something a "1" on a d6 five or six times in a row. "Anything but a one," got to be a curse at the table.
The PCs started in a rough spot and slowly started to pull forward, and then a third group entered the scene, but the PCs stayed upstairs, and eventually they went away.
The PCs captured the scientist, captured the hot headed rebel, made it downstairs and discovered that the third group had been apparently after the bioweapon, which the scientist admitted wasn't a traditional weapon, but something far weirder, a "Dracul."
"A Dracul? I'm not familiar with that organization," the team face said in a perfect response.
And the chase was on, they cornered the leader, his five zombie assistants, and one still sedated ghoul strapped into the passenger seat of a pick-up truck in an alley and the fight went .... poorly. The previous fight in the dacha took most of the points they had to spend for reliability, so when the shooting started here, success was at the mercy of the dice's grace.
And see the previous statement about their luck.
The fight was brutal, and I'm sure if we all had more familiarity, they could have gotten at least partial refreshes back, but the fight was suitably climatic which ended with a dead Renfield, five dead zombies, an escaping, but re-sedated, ghoul, and of the five agents? Only one was in positive health, the rest, were various levels of hurt, included two within a stiff breeze's worth of death.
I call that a win. They all, barely lived, and if this was the start of an actual campaign, they all would have been introduced to the realities of vampires in the world, and have a place to start dealing with the conspiracy.
As I've mentioned, the game runs quick, and like other single die systems, is fairly brutal. By default the chance of most actions is either 3+ or 4+ on a d6, which makes it fairly likely the players will succeed. I definitely will be looking at using the Gumshoe system, at least as an inspiration, as it removes a lot of the "Gee, the game stops if the player's fail their investigation roll." There are definitely lots of bits and pieces (Heat, Mental Health) that we never engaged in, but for a 4ish hour session, including character creation, I will probably be adding this to my "to buy" pile.
Rather than running the short introductory scenario in the back of the book, I decided I would just run my own small creation because I wanted to see how much of a pain it was to create a scenario for the players, and deal with the power of the Investigative abilities. It isn't so much that I don't know how to handle basic clues, but a constant fear of mine would be coming up with useful information when a player spends a point to get enhanced information.
The scenario I presented was simple - a group of concerned actors had hired the fixer to provide a group of deniable assets to enter into the Separatist region of Ukraine, and intercept a suspected bio-weapon that had been obtain within the boundaries of Russia from a Romanian arms dealer. While it probably wasn't a Soviet era weapon (the lack of markings was a clear give-away) it was a too serious a threat to go away. So the group needed to get in, retrieve the weapon, the scientist traveling with the weapon, and get out. Preferably without getting on the evening news.
I had planned basically three basic stages - the meeting and getting into the region, finding the safe house and the assault, and the vampiric twist. After that I figured everything would have gone to hell, and why bother planning.
As it turned out, I was totally accurate in my assessment.
The PCs took the job, did some preliminary research and set-up, obtaining a TV van for a cover ID, and headed off across Ukraine. Being super spies, there was a montage of the group traveling and bribing various guards of the government and separatist factions.
Once arriving in Luhansk, they triangulated the cell signal to find where the hot headed rebel was hiding, and retasked a satellite to provide updated intel. Note: As the GM, I had absolutely no clue how they were going to find the safe house, I just trusted that they were going to find a way to do it.
And hey, that worked.
They assaulted the dacha, and that's when things started to go bad. Combat is rough, and I think I may have overly estimated their competence with killing things - I had expected the players to go combat heavy because it was a convention game, and well I think I had one universally deadly character, and one fairly deadly character, and everyone else apparently took the "if the guns come out, we've already fucked up, route." And I forgot to calibrate till halfway through the assault and turn the soldiers into mooks.
Though with how poorly the PCs rolled, there may have been no saving them ultimately. One of my players managed to roll something a "1" on a d6 five or six times in a row. "Anything but a one," got to be a curse at the table.
The PCs started in a rough spot and slowly started to pull forward, and then a third group entered the scene, but the PCs stayed upstairs, and eventually they went away.
The PCs captured the scientist, captured the hot headed rebel, made it downstairs and discovered that the third group had been apparently after the bioweapon, which the scientist admitted wasn't a traditional weapon, but something far weirder, a "Dracul."
"A Dracul? I'm not familiar with that organization," the team face said in a perfect response.
And the chase was on, they cornered the leader, his five zombie assistants, and one still sedated ghoul strapped into the passenger seat of a pick-up truck in an alley and the fight went .... poorly. The previous fight in the dacha took most of the points they had to spend for reliability, so when the shooting started here, success was at the mercy of the dice's grace.
And see the previous statement about their luck.
The fight was brutal, and I'm sure if we all had more familiarity, they could have gotten at least partial refreshes back, but the fight was suitably climatic which ended with a dead Renfield, five dead zombies, an escaping, but re-sedated, ghoul, and of the five agents? Only one was in positive health, the rest, were various levels of hurt, included two within a stiff breeze's worth of death.
I call that a win. They all, barely lived, and if this was the start of an actual campaign, they all would have been introduced to the realities of vampires in the world, and have a place to start dealing with the conspiracy.
As I've mentioned, the game runs quick, and like other single die systems, is fairly brutal. By default the chance of most actions is either 3+ or 4+ on a d6, which makes it fairly likely the players will succeed. I definitely will be looking at using the Gumshoe system, at least as an inspiration, as it removes a lot of the "Gee, the game stops if the player's fail their investigation roll." There are definitely lots of bits and pieces (Heat, Mental Health) that we never engaged in, but for a 4ish hour session, including character creation, I will probably be adding this to my "to buy" pile.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Zeppelin Attack! Review
I actually had a Kickstarter arrive on time, so I got to play Zeppelin Attack! over the weekend
We had a lot of fun, and aren't sure whether the few snags we hit were intentional or whether we just had poor strategies. Reactions around the table went from "When can we buy this?" to "I probably won't ask to play it, but I will happily play it again." So I will call this a win for my need to pick up more games that are lighter in mental load than what I generally enjoy playing.
My wife and I played with another couple, and all of us are regular board gamers, and we get together regularly to play games - everything from Firefly to a bunch of smaller games. Being the new game in the house, I explained the rules (as best I understood) and we were off.
The first few rounds were frustrating - none of us could reliably attack (Snag #1), and the mercenaries for purchase were relatively expensive - I think the cheapest was a 7 or 8 (Snag #2). This meant that we had several rounds of desperately trying to find the two Fate Point cards that would allow us to buy stuff (Snag #3).
As noted, there were a few snags, and whether these are issues baked into the design or just us playing the game for the first time, I'm unsure - we'll be playing again, so I'm sure we'll figure it out.
Snag #1: None of us could reliably attack. I went into the game expecting to land hits reliably, and discovered that it was going to be rare for me to do so. It seemed like unless we ganged up on one player, there were enough spread defense to ensure that attacks just didn't land often. Or we just had bad luck in picking who to attack.
Snag #2 and 3: Probably could be the same snag - we start off with one 3-point and one 4-point Fate card, the currency that allows us to buy cards. Unfortunately, unless you manage to pull them both together, you'll have one sitting in your hand taking up space while you wait for another card - and the two operative cards that allow you to generate more cards were relatively slow to fill.
I think this is where our inexperience with the system bit us - even if you want to play a more aggressive deck, you need to buy a fair number of operative cards to generate sufficient Fate points to purchase - and being as the Fate cards range 2-5 points, and the cards generally run 4 (rare) to 6-8 (normal) to as much as 9 or 10 (rare). So you need to have a good engine for obtaining those cards.
Like you do in any deck building game - it is just that the variance obtaining the points is a bit higher in Zeppelin Attack!
My only other critique of the game is the rule book - it is generally fine; however, the back page is an ad, while the "Summary of turns" is inside the front cover - this meant that at the table I had to constantly open the book to reference the book. Big deal in the end? Nope. Annoying? Yup. I'll probably be printing out, or modifying the summary page from the online book for this purpose.
While the game ran long, everyone had fun. My wife wasn't having as much fun, and then she had a single turn where her massive 4-zeppelin armada wrecked destruction across the table and her sounds of delight could only be heard by bats and other small animals.
We had a lot of fun, and aren't sure whether the few snags we hit were intentional or whether we just had poor strategies. Reactions around the table went from "When can we buy this?" to "I probably won't ask to play it, but I will happily play it again." So I will call this a win for my need to pick up more games that are lighter in mental load than what I generally enjoy playing.
My wife and I played with another couple, and all of us are regular board gamers, and we get together regularly to play games - everything from Firefly to a bunch of smaller games. Being the new game in the house, I explained the rules (as best I understood) and we were off.
The first few rounds were frustrating - none of us could reliably attack (Snag #1), and the mercenaries for purchase were relatively expensive - I think the cheapest was a 7 or 8 (Snag #2). This meant that we had several rounds of desperately trying to find the two Fate Point cards that would allow us to buy stuff (Snag #3).
As noted, there were a few snags, and whether these are issues baked into the design or just us playing the game for the first time, I'm unsure - we'll be playing again, so I'm sure we'll figure it out.
Snag #1: None of us could reliably attack. I went into the game expecting to land hits reliably, and discovered that it was going to be rare for me to do so. It seemed like unless we ganged up on one player, there were enough spread defense to ensure that attacks just didn't land often. Or we just had bad luck in picking who to attack.
Snag #2 and 3: Probably could be the same snag - we start off with one 3-point and one 4-point Fate card, the currency that allows us to buy cards. Unfortunately, unless you manage to pull them both together, you'll have one sitting in your hand taking up space while you wait for another card - and the two operative cards that allow you to generate more cards were relatively slow to fill.
I think this is where our inexperience with the system bit us - even if you want to play a more aggressive deck, you need to buy a fair number of operative cards to generate sufficient Fate points to purchase - and being as the Fate cards range 2-5 points, and the cards generally run 4 (rare) to 6-8 (normal) to as much as 9 or 10 (rare). So you need to have a good engine for obtaining those cards.
Like you do in any deck building game - it is just that the variance obtaining the points is a bit higher in Zeppelin Attack!
My only other critique of the game is the rule book - it is generally fine; however, the back page is an ad, while the "Summary of turns" is inside the front cover - this meant that at the table I had to constantly open the book to reference the book. Big deal in the end? Nope. Annoying? Yup. I'll probably be printing out, or modifying the summary page from the online book for this purpose.
While the game ran long, everyone had fun. My wife wasn't having as much fun, and then she had a single turn where her massive 4-zeppelin armada wrecked destruction across the table and her sounds of delight could only be heard by bats and other small animals.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Reactions to Firefly the RPG
I ran Firefly today for the first time and had a blast - I just ran a one shot from the Echoes of War series (Bucking The Tiger) - and despite none of us knowing the rules, and me being the only one who had read the rules, everything went smoothly. We modified some of the archetypes (we had a Law Dog, Former Companion, Natural Reader, Dishonored Politician, and a mechanic/doctor "parts is parts, fluids are fluids,") and played through the adventure is about four and a half hours.
Mechanically, the system did everything I wanted the system to do. Generating the dice pools went fairly smoothly; though using the distinctions was a bit rough for the first hour or two, and didn't smooth down right away - the various abilities that the distinctions gave were used frequently, remembering that those distinctions also could give you a d8/d4 to your pool didn't go so well.
Complications flowed like water on both sides of the "screen", and in time I think we'd all become far more comfortable creating and using them. I probably thought of something interesting to do for 75% of them, and we still had them flowing back and forth.
Asset creation wasn't really touched - not sure if it wasn't understood as well, or if with how the players were rolling, they were just rolling hot. The doctor definitely kept trying to create advantages with stimulants and sedatives that I needed a better grasp of the rules to take advantage of.
When I think about what I loved so much about the game, I keep coming back to the flow of the game, there were points that things did stutter - basically anything that had to roll against the group, I want to take a look at the rules and see if I "should" have done a single base roll and then let everyone roll against it; or whether just going around in order was what I needed to do; but I have yet to see a game that handles that perfectly.
And everyone at the table had their share of failures, but even with those failures no one got discouraged - the complication mechanic - receiving a reward when your dice hate you took the sting out of "I wanted to do this action, but I failed miserably," as it became, "I wanted to do this action, I failed miserably, but I got a plot point for it AND this nifty complication."
The system favors short quick engagements, whether it was a knife fight or a game of cards - I think I at most had two or three rounds of going around the table and getting actions; otherwise, everything moved smoothly and quickly getting back to the players making more interesting choices and causing more problems.
Having sung the praises of the system, the adventure itself was amazingly well written. Being a one shot, I skipped how to integrate into the original series as well as any need to tie the triggering NPC's history too closely with the players - they were good sports and rolled with "yes you know her and she was a nice person." Each of the five acts were well written and for me, sufficient information to run the scene, and while not requiring a certain outcome, the adventure covered all the traditional bases of solution sets, so that even if my players pulled something out of left field, I felt I had enough structure to know how things would work given those actions.
There was at no point I felt like the plot had to ramrodded down the players' throats, each step felt fairly natural from the step before, and I did keep it fairly linear in nature because it was a one-shot, we did have a time limit, and I didn't have a lot of external hooks to tie things to; whereas I could see a game definitely spacing it out to where the adventure plots would have taken 2 sessions to complete from just all the subplots abounding.
In conclusion, I'm thrilled with my purchase. I always thought that I would enjoy how the Cortex Plus system would play, and this game said "Yes, this was the game I want to run." Now to just fold time and space to create the necessary time in my schedule so I can do it all.
Mechanically, the system did everything I wanted the system to do. Generating the dice pools went fairly smoothly; though using the distinctions was a bit rough for the first hour or two, and didn't smooth down right away - the various abilities that the distinctions gave were used frequently, remembering that those distinctions also could give you a d8/d4 to your pool didn't go so well.
Complications flowed like water on both sides of the "screen", and in time I think we'd all become far more comfortable creating and using them. I probably thought of something interesting to do for 75% of them, and we still had them flowing back and forth.
Asset creation wasn't really touched - not sure if it wasn't understood as well, or if with how the players were rolling, they were just rolling hot. The doctor definitely kept trying to create advantages with stimulants and sedatives that I needed a better grasp of the rules to take advantage of.
When I think about what I loved so much about the game, I keep coming back to the flow of the game, there were points that things did stutter - basically anything that had to roll against the group, I want to take a look at the rules and see if I "should" have done a single base roll and then let everyone roll against it; or whether just going around in order was what I needed to do; but I have yet to see a game that handles that perfectly.
And everyone at the table had their share of failures, but even with those failures no one got discouraged - the complication mechanic - receiving a reward when your dice hate you took the sting out of "I wanted to do this action, but I failed miserably," as it became, "I wanted to do this action, I failed miserably, but I got a plot point for it AND this nifty complication."
The system favors short quick engagements, whether it was a knife fight or a game of cards - I think I at most had two or three rounds of going around the table and getting actions; otherwise, everything moved smoothly and quickly getting back to the players making more interesting choices and causing more problems.
Having sung the praises of the system, the adventure itself was amazingly well written. Being a one shot, I skipped how to integrate into the original series as well as any need to tie the triggering NPC's history too closely with the players - they were good sports and rolled with "yes you know her and she was a nice person." Each of the five acts were well written and for me, sufficient information to run the scene, and while not requiring a certain outcome, the adventure covered all the traditional bases of solution sets, so that even if my players pulled something out of left field, I felt I had enough structure to know how things would work given those actions.
There was at no point I felt like the plot had to ramrodded down the players' throats, each step felt fairly natural from the step before, and I did keep it fairly linear in nature because it was a one-shot, we did have a time limit, and I didn't have a lot of external hooks to tie things to; whereas I could see a game definitely spacing it out to where the adventure plots would have taken 2 sessions to complete from just all the subplots abounding.
In conclusion, I'm thrilled with my purchase. I always thought that I would enjoy how the Cortex Plus system would play, and this game said "Yes, this was the game I want to run." Now to just fold time and space to create the necessary time in my schedule so I can do it all.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Just Good Fun
This past weekend I was at Madicon hosted at James Madison University's by the Science-Fiction/Fantasy Guild and I got to play several new games (Thunderstone), play in one that I've run a one-shot in (Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, 2nd Edition), and run Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.
The last I ran Sunday morning with half my table hung over or recovering from a hard night partying. To make things easy I ran the first act of the scenario in the back of the book - for players I had Cyclops and Colossus; Daredevil and Spiderman; and Iron Man.
To summarize the review: It is a good solid game. It will not satisfy the Champions/M&M folks out there that want to tweak and finesse their characters, but that game is already written.
The last I ran Sunday morning with half my table hung over or recovering from a hard night partying. To make things easy I ran the first act of the scenario in the back of the book - for players I had Cyclops and Colossus; Daredevil and Spiderman; and Iron Man.
To summarize the review: It is a good solid game. It will not satisfy the Champions/M&M folks out there that want to tweak and finesse their characters, but that game is already written.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Well that was fun (Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG Review)
So this weekend finishes up the second stress beta test weekend event that I've participated. And unlike last time, I'm not under an NDA this time around. So I figured I'd capture my thoughts.
Short version: Will I buy it? Maybe. My core problem with MMORPGs still stands.
Stories
So I played a Jedi Knight (through 9); a Bounty Hunter (5); a Sith Inquisitor (4); and a Smuggler (16) in that order. As a whole the story lines were good; the Jedi Knight was average in that it had good choices that caused me to flick between the the options trying to decide what I would actually do. The Bounty Hunter's story arc was the worst of the bunch, dark side does not mean petty betrayal - it is just not taking the peaceful restorative route.
The Sith Inquisitor story line was awesome enough that I stopped playing because if I do end up playing the game I'll be definitely playing through the arc. The choices there were possibly not as conflicted as when I was playing the Jedi Knight, but were meaningful and carried connotations that I enjoyed playing. I had a lot of destructive id engaging fun with the arc.
And finally the Smuggler - I got off the homeworld with this character and made it till I got to the ship, and tried out the PVP options. The story lines were above average, and the choices meaningful and I did enjoy my option to, and fully engaged in the "flirt" option with ever NPC that I was allowed to flirt with.
If you are a lover of stories, then I think I can recommend the game for you.
Game Play/Combat
Gameplay was fairly "standard" in my, not so experienced, opinion. One thing I noticed right away is I seemed to get a lot of abilities right away - a lot faster than I was used to in my brief flirtation of BSG MMO; City of Heroes (Free version); or World of Warcraft. The classes definitely felt entirely different in how they played out, with different enemies presenting different problems for each of them.
Something that I particularly liked was that it was rarely pulling a single non-hostile creature from a group and killing them. The quests were generally of the "Go do this" with optional side quests of "Kill X of Y" which, I think, is perfect for this game. None of the quests were particularly difficult, though that may be my overly cautious play style.
Ship combat, in the one mission I played in, was .... not thrilling. It felt very much like a mid-90s flight combat game - I had a flashback to getting in one of those big arcade games and popping in my 50 cents and flying a fighter jet through waves of enemies. Possibly there was more complexity in non-introductory quests, but I'm not really seeing it in the intro quest.
Having the NPC companion really helped a lot with the ease and fun of the game, plus they all brough different abilities to the table.
PVP play, at least through the warzones, was interesting. I got to play two of the three variations of competitions (a football/rugby look alike with blasters, and a control point variation); and it was chaotic and noisy and I felt like after a little bit I knew what I was doing and could help. And I ended up in the same middle of the pack that I do on an FPS, so I guess I was doing something right, or at least average for me. The games were fun, fairly rewarding for the time I put in them.
If you are looking for innovative and nifty game play, I'm not sure I can recommend this game to you. I'd argue that it is neutral at worst though; it doesn't really add to the game; but it definitely doesn't detract, especially in comparison to other games on the market.
Crafting
Sorry Mr. Burger, this game is not going to win the reward for awesome crafting system. In fact, this is a crafting system for people who have never been a huge fan of crafting. You get the choice of three skills, of which only one of them can be an actual creation skill (i.e., make guns/armor/lightsabers/etc.), which the others are standard get loot, while others are more mission related - send a companion away for 1-6 minutes (at least at the low levels) to go get stuff while you are out doing stuff.
I LOVE the crafting system because generally I hate doing crafting. But now instead of "me" doing the crafting, I send my minion to go do some crafting. Or missioning. And even when I had only the one companion what I could do was get to town, and send him off to go do some crafting while I cleaned out my inventory, leveled up, what have you. And eventually he'd return.
The system isn't particularly intricate or detailed. But it did keep me in equipment from time to time. For once I'd be tempted to NOT make a character who simply gathers and sells to other characters.
Final Thoughts
I liked what I saw. The game was fun, the story lines were (mostly) entertaining, and I could see playing through them to see different aspects and quests. The question is whether though it'll be worth the initial purchase + monthly fee. And that's the question, for me, that I'm debating - that if I play this game it'll be a mostly single player game as my friends will probably be on different servers, playing at different times; and I'm not dependable to get into an active guild. My brief flirtation of the free-to-play BSG taught me that.
Do you like Star Wars? Do you enjoy engaging story lines? Then get it. If you are looking for something that's going to be brutal and the combat is going to be the thing to do? I have no clue whether it'll work for you. That's not my gaming fix - I don't have that need to fill.
The game is definitely not "hard" - though I didn't get a chance to do any of the instances ... errr flashpoints.
Short version: Will I buy it? Maybe. My core problem with MMORPGs still stands.
Stories
So I played a Jedi Knight (through 9); a Bounty Hunter (5); a Sith Inquisitor (4); and a Smuggler (16) in that order. As a whole the story lines were good; the Jedi Knight was average in that it had good choices that caused me to flick between the the options trying to decide what I would actually do. The Bounty Hunter's story arc was the worst of the bunch, dark side does not mean petty betrayal - it is just not taking the peaceful restorative route.
The Sith Inquisitor story line was awesome enough that I stopped playing because if I do end up playing the game I'll be definitely playing through the arc. The choices there were possibly not as conflicted as when I was playing the Jedi Knight, but were meaningful and carried connotations that I enjoyed playing. I had a lot of destructive id engaging fun with the arc.
And finally the Smuggler - I got off the homeworld with this character and made it till I got to the ship, and tried out the PVP options. The story lines were above average, and the choices meaningful and I did enjoy my option to, and fully engaged in the "flirt" option with ever NPC that I was allowed to flirt with.
If you are a lover of stories, then I think I can recommend the game for you.
Game Play/Combat
Gameplay was fairly "standard" in my, not so experienced, opinion. One thing I noticed right away is I seemed to get a lot of abilities right away - a lot faster than I was used to in my brief flirtation of BSG MMO; City of Heroes (Free version); or World of Warcraft. The classes definitely felt entirely different in how they played out, with different enemies presenting different problems for each of them.
Something that I particularly liked was that it was rarely pulling a single non-hostile creature from a group and killing them. The quests were generally of the "Go do this" with optional side quests of "Kill X of Y" which, I think, is perfect for this game. None of the quests were particularly difficult, though that may be my overly cautious play style.
Ship combat, in the one mission I played in, was .... not thrilling. It felt very much like a mid-90s flight combat game - I had a flashback to getting in one of those big arcade games and popping in my 50 cents and flying a fighter jet through waves of enemies. Possibly there was more complexity in non-introductory quests, but I'm not really seeing it in the intro quest.
Having the NPC companion really helped a lot with the ease and fun of the game, plus they all brough different abilities to the table.
PVP play, at least through the warzones, was interesting. I got to play two of the three variations of competitions (a football/rugby look alike with blasters, and a control point variation); and it was chaotic and noisy and I felt like after a little bit I knew what I was doing and could help. And I ended up in the same middle of the pack that I do on an FPS, so I guess I was doing something right, or at least average for me. The games were fun, fairly rewarding for the time I put in them.
If you are looking for innovative and nifty game play, I'm not sure I can recommend this game to you. I'd argue that it is neutral at worst though; it doesn't really add to the game; but it definitely doesn't detract, especially in comparison to other games on the market.
Crafting
Sorry Mr. Burger, this game is not going to win the reward for awesome crafting system. In fact, this is a crafting system for people who have never been a huge fan of crafting. You get the choice of three skills, of which only one of them can be an actual creation skill (i.e., make guns/armor/lightsabers/etc.), which the others are standard get loot, while others are more mission related - send a companion away for 1-6 minutes (at least at the low levels) to go get stuff while you are out doing stuff.
I LOVE the crafting system because generally I hate doing crafting. But now instead of "me" doing the crafting, I send my minion to go do some crafting. Or missioning. And even when I had only the one companion what I could do was get to town, and send him off to go do some crafting while I cleaned out my inventory, leveled up, what have you. And eventually he'd return.
The system isn't particularly intricate or detailed. But it did keep me in equipment from time to time. For once I'd be tempted to NOT make a character who simply gathers and sells to other characters.
Final Thoughts
I liked what I saw. The game was fun, the story lines were (mostly) entertaining, and I could see playing through them to see different aspects and quests. The question is whether though it'll be worth the initial purchase + monthly fee. And that's the question, for me, that I'm debating - that if I play this game it'll be a mostly single player game as my friends will probably be on different servers, playing at different times; and I'm not dependable to get into an active guild. My brief flirtation of the free-to-play BSG taught me that.
Do you like Star Wars? Do you enjoy engaging story lines? Then get it. If you are looking for something that's going to be brutal and the combat is going to be the thing to do? I have no clue whether it'll work for you. That's not my gaming fix - I don't have that need to fill.
The game is definitely not "hard" - though I didn't get a chance to do any of the instances ... errr flashpoints.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Eclipse Phase: A Short Review
I was asked to compose my thought regarding Eclipse Phase, and as I take requests. Let me do so, without much wait.
Note that my thoughts are based on reading the book a few times, and a half-assed one shot run by a GM who meant well, but didn't know the system.
And Eclipse Phase is not a system that is kind to people who don't know the game. Key items: It is percentile based, your characters are built off 1000 points, and you have nearly endless variety in the bodies you can sleeve your mind into. In case that seems like a totally alien and weird concept, I suggest the wikipedia article about it.
There is no way to model that sort of wide flexibility with actual mechanical differentiation without an overly complex system. The question is, of course, where does the complexity come in? It appears the complexity comes in when you create your character and change bodies. Otherwise the system is fairly easy - blackjack d100 (i.e., roll as close as you can to your adjusted skill without going over, doubles (00, 11, 22, 33...) are critical, beating an opposed roll by 30+ points is an exception success). That's basically it, there's remembering what your equipment does, but that can be easily cheat sheet away.
Except combat. Combat is crunchy as all hell, and what's worse, is the damage system is non-intuitive. You have Durability which is your total hit points, but your Wound Threshold is when you take penalties. As numbers on a sheet this is incredibly annoying, and would have been better served with boxes, ala White Wolf. How does it work?
One character has Durability 40, Wound Threshold 10; another has Durability 40; Wound Threshold 8. If they both take 8 points of damage, the second character is at a -10 to all actions, the first character is fine; if they both take 20 points of damage, both characters are at -20 (10/20; 8/16); and at 40 both are down and out. The problem with graphically representing this is that the first character will need 4 lines (No penalty/-10/-20/-30); while the second character would need five lines for the additional -40 penalty. If I was playing I'd just make a damage tracking side sheet.
But that just adds to the complexity.
Does Eclipse Phase do what it intends to do? Yes. It provides the verisimilitude of what I'd consider a Transhuman Horror universe to look like. Unfortunately, there's no clean smooth way to do this except by using a lot of numbers, and a lot of crunching. That means that for many of the people I game with, despite the numbers being primarily frontloaded, it is still going to be an uphill battle.
But do I want to play or run a game? Yes, to the first, and probably to the second. The latter will just require finding players who found older editions of Shadowrun not that crunchy.
Summary
Good: Flexibility, Theme, Mechanics
Bad: Non-intuitive calculations in combat.
Recommendation: Assuming a group that is okay with the buy-in to character creation and the math of combat, yes. As the system is available for free on PDF under the CCL, there's no reason to at least read it over. I did and bought the hard cover because of it.
Note that my thoughts are based on reading the book a few times, and a half-assed one shot run by a GM who meant well, but didn't know the system.
And Eclipse Phase is not a system that is kind to people who don't know the game. Key items: It is percentile based, your characters are built off 1000 points, and you have nearly endless variety in the bodies you can sleeve your mind into. In case that seems like a totally alien and weird concept, I suggest the wikipedia article about it.
There is no way to model that sort of wide flexibility with actual mechanical differentiation without an overly complex system. The question is, of course, where does the complexity come in? It appears the complexity comes in when you create your character and change bodies. Otherwise the system is fairly easy - blackjack d100 (i.e., roll as close as you can to your adjusted skill without going over, doubles (00, 11, 22, 33...) are critical, beating an opposed roll by 30+ points is an exception success). That's basically it, there's remembering what your equipment does, but that can be easily cheat sheet away.
Except combat. Combat is crunchy as all hell, and what's worse, is the damage system is non-intuitive. You have Durability which is your total hit points, but your Wound Threshold is when you take penalties. As numbers on a sheet this is incredibly annoying, and would have been better served with boxes, ala White Wolf. How does it work?
One character has Durability 40, Wound Threshold 10; another has Durability 40; Wound Threshold 8. If they both take 8 points of damage, the second character is at a -10 to all actions, the first character is fine; if they both take 20 points of damage, both characters are at -20 (10/20; 8/16); and at 40 both are down and out. The problem with graphically representing this is that the first character will need 4 lines (No penalty/-10/-20/-30); while the second character would need five lines for the additional -40 penalty. If I was playing I'd just make a damage tracking side sheet.
But that just adds to the complexity.
Does Eclipse Phase do what it intends to do? Yes. It provides the verisimilitude of what I'd consider a Transhuman Horror universe to look like. Unfortunately, there's no clean smooth way to do this except by using a lot of numbers, and a lot of crunching. That means that for many of the people I game with, despite the numbers being primarily frontloaded, it is still going to be an uphill battle.
But do I want to play or run a game? Yes, to the first, and probably to the second. The latter will just require finding players who found older editions of Shadowrun not that crunchy.
Summary
Good: Flexibility, Theme, Mechanics
Bad: Non-intuitive calculations in combat.
Recommendation: Assuming a group that is okay with the buy-in to character creation and the math of combat, yes. As the system is available for free on PDF under the CCL, there's no reason to at least read it over. I did and bought the hard cover because of it.
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