Do you like cyberpunk? Do you like post-apocalyptic settings? Well then, I may have found something that might interest you. Interface Zero: San Francisco is a city book for Interface Zero by Gunmetal Games. In case you were wondering, Interface Zero is a setting that utilizes the Savage World rules. The year is 2088 and the world is a very different place. global warming has taken its toll, devastating many coastal cities. Many areas of the world have been ravaged by nuclear war, leaving them nothing but irradiated wastelands. The United States has broken into several small warring factions due to these events and large corporations have as much power as nations in this new world. Interface Zero: San Francisco provides a more in-depth look at a different type of city for this setting. Read the rest of this entry »
It embarrasses me a little to admit that it took me three of the Savage Worlds genre companions before I realized that the same woman was presented on each cover. She is simply changed to fit the genre contained within the book. The red-headed Amazon on the cover of the Fantasy Companion is the red-headed flying heroine on the cover of the Super Powers Companion and the red-headed vampire on the cover of the Horror Companion, simply adapted to each genre. The cover art is not the only thing the companions share, though. Each of them also includes extensive rules to modify the simple core Savage Worlds mechanics to make them an appropriate gaming system for each genre.
As in the other companion books, these genre mechanics begin with edges and hindrances in the Horror Companion. These edges and hindrances alone do a great deal to help foster the feel of a horror game. Horror Companion hindrances include things like Bleeder and Screamer while the edges are things like Necromancer and Monster Hunter. It should not be hard to guess the purpose of those hindrances and edges given the names and all of the edges and hindrances presented in the book reproduce classic features displayed by characters in horror stories.
The player section of the book also includes a number of new character races. This is one place where the Horror Companion noticeably diverges from its sister books. The Fantasy Companion has a short section of fantasy appropriate races which are carefully balanced and rules about how to create additional balanced races specific to each group’s campaign. The bulk of the rules in the Super Powers Companion consists of balanced character creation, with the idea that alien and unusual races are simply created by generating them using the character creation rules.
Read the rest of this entry »
You can keep GenCon and Origins. For my money, the best two days in gaming is Fear the Con.
Now, I will admit to being ridiculously biased as I’ve never been to either GenCon or Origins, so there is nothing scientific about my opinion. But I can’t imagine either of those bigger conventions beating 26 hours of gaming in a 48 hour period interspersed with hanging out with some of my favorite gamers.
People say GenCon is like going to a class reunion at the high school you wanted to go to but my high school was only 200 people, so the idea of being surrounded by tens of thousands of people, even ones who share my hobby holds no appeal to me. I also get the feeling that GenCon is as much about announcements and sales as it is about really gaming. This is not true of Fear the Con. Other than a booth from a local gaming store, there is nothing for sale. There is no wandering the dealer hall because there is no dealer hall. While this might disappoint some people, it fits what I want perfectly as all the focus is on playing, playing, playing.
Hanging out with a hundred or so people who are focused on gaming, having fun and sharing their love of not only the games but the community and the con..that’s pretty close to perfect for me.
I’ve been to Fear the Con all five years that it has existed and almost without exception it has gotten better. Let me clarify that statement. This year was not quite as good as last year. Last year was ridiculously phenomenal, with 4 of the 6 slots I played being spectacular and the other 2 being only great.
This year, everything was just great. Under any other circumstances, it would have been the best Con ever. In fact it was likely better than the other 3 Fear the Cons. It simply had to compete against a Con with an unfair advantage.
And honestly, the reduction in my enjoyment was my own fault. I learned a lesson last year that I did not follow this year. Last year, all of my sessions except for 1 included at least one person that I knew well and had played with often. This gave me a person whose play style I understood and who I knew I could play off of. Not only did this help me relax around the other people around the table who were strangers to one degree or another, but also it allowed me to set up both my own character and theirs for awesome and/or hilarious situations. I knew how far I could go without offending them and the liberties that I could take without going too far with their characters. Likewise, there was someone at the table that I trusted and that allowed me to go along with their ideas knowing that the payoff would be worth it.
This year, that happened only a couple of times and my Con suffered for it. Not that there weren’t still some amazing sessions, including a couple that my friends were not involved in. I played in a game with a lot of creative role players that was the perfect introduction to the tension of the Dread system.
Of course, I was afraid that the Con would suffer for entirely different reasons. Fear the Con is no massive money making enterprise and, in fact, I suspect that the hosts over at feartheboot.com likely lose money on the proposition. Thus, I can’t expect them to have a fabulous convention center to throw the Con in and, indeed, the first 4 were held in a relatively small, out of the way, old venue. A relatively small, out of the way, old venue I loved. Free drinks all weekend (including booze, thank you Midwest,) cheap food and the sense of community that only exists when everyone has to help everyone out to make sure that things go well. Oh, and two older gentlemen serving drinks who clearly had no idea what we were doing but were polite and friendly to us weirdoes, anyway. It was not what I expected the first year but ended up being better than I could have imagined.
Two things were changed this year. The announcement that Fear the Con would be at the beginning of May rather than the middle of March did not affect me, much. In fact, I enjoy May in St. Louis much more than March. There is much less chance of snow. But the announcement that they would be changing venues made me wary. It felt very much like trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.
World Wide Wing night was as good as always, with St. Louis standard fare that reminded me that people in Texas don’t eat the unhealthiest food in America and conversation with old friends and new that was so good I stayed up way too late so that it wouldn’t have to end.
The next day, I entered the new convention hall sure that it would not be as good as the old one. I was pleased to discover that it was wrong.
There was a stage in the new one with a real PA system so that the announcements that were made throughout the con were loud enough for everyone to hear and in a place that everyone could easily see. The concession stand was also just a few steps away from all the tables rather than on another floor, a fact which no doubt pleased the volunteer waitresses as much or more than it pleased any of the con goers.
But most importantly, this place had carpet. This may seem like a minor thing but the floor in the old convention hall was made of lovely hardwood. Lovely hardwood that was incredibly conducive to echoes. To be heard across the table at a game you had to yell to be heard over the conversations going on at the tables around you and even at the other end of the hall. Of course, yelling meant that the people around you had to yell to be heard over you at their own table creating a spiral of voice shredding shouting that left everyone hoarse by the end of the weekend. With the carpet to deaden the noise it was easy to be heard by the people at the table. Fear the Con already nearly perfectly scratched my convention going itch but little things like this make a convention better.
Of course, the new place wasn’t better in all regards. I did miss the two old guys and there were no windows in the new convention hall. Without being able to see outside, I completely lost track of time and was continuously surprised when I went outside and the sun was still up.
Amusingly enough, there were not one but two children’s birthday parties at the community center while Fear the Con was there this year. Hearkening back to the famous Princess Party, one can only question what the poor parents thought of the conglomeration of nerdism and geekery they faced when coming to what should have been a simple celebration.
I think the best praise I can give Fear the Con is that there are many people there that I see only once per year who I consider friends. It is just as telling that the last day of the con I wanted just one more day to game, to talk and to hang out.
I can’t imagine better praise for a gaming convention.
I picked up Burning Wheel Gold at GenCon 2011, but I’m only able to sit down and write something about it now. The reason it has taken me so long to write anything in regards to this book is both a good thing and a bad thing. The bad thing is that I live here in Northern Kentucky and the gaming community is small and somewhat insular. In addition to this, I did not have the time to invest to find people that were playing Burning Wheel. These two things kept me from playing the game until recently. The good thing that came from this though is that I’ve met people from the Burning Wheel community that have helped me get playing via Skype. It has been a great experience and allows me to be able to speak about Burning Wheel Gold from a place of experience as well as teaching me that you can not talk about Burning Wheel without talking about the community. Read the rest of this entry »
We are living in a new golden age if you are a lover of super hero role-playing games. With the release of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, both major comics publishers have their worlds available to be utilized. This is something that hasn’t happened in well over a decade. DC Adventures was released back in 2010 by Green Ronin Publishing. What I want to do is give you a brief overview of the mechanics since it has been out for awhile and explain what seems to be the main objective of the game.
DC Adventures’ system is the third edition of the Mutants & Masterminds engine developed by Green Ronin Publishing. The entire system is based upon the roll of a single D20. Any action taken consists of the summation of an attribute and any bonuses or penalties versus a difficulty. The difference between the total and the difficulty determines degrees of success or failure. Instead of having hit points or body and stun like other games, conditions are applied to the characters as a combat goes along to hamper their performance. This is done to better emulate the flow of comics as super heroes are always able to bounce back from even the most sever beatings. The largest part of this book is dedicated to character creation which is done using a traditional point buy system. A power level is agreed upon before the game begins which sets the amount of points that players have to spend. From this pool of points, players purchase everything from attributes to powers to best describe what type of character they want to play in the game. There are guideline put in place in an effort to keep characters balanced despite choices that players make. In the Hero’s Handbook, the iconic heroes and villains stats and bios are provided and two more books are planned to delineate a large portion of the members of the DC Universe. It also has a hero point mechanic that allows for some limited authorial control within the game. These points are garnered for doing heroic things and are used to allow player to do such things as edit the scene or re-roll if necessary.
With the bulk of the book being dedicated to character creation, it is obvious that the focus of DC Adventures is the creation of your own hero to play in the DC continuum. It is this character creation system that allows this game to shine. Unlike it’s predecessors, no charts are necessary to determine the value of a power based on all the flaws that you would assign to it, nor is there the ability for you to create Vlad, the world-eater based on creative use of flaws and such. The powers are also effects based so that you no longer have to page through reams of text to find the specific power that you need. Instead, there is a smaller choice of powers and you define how it looks within the game world. This provides a focus on creativity on the player’s part instead of a reliance on an encyclopedia of game mechanics which is refreshing to find in a traditional super hero game. The glaring flaw is that it is very difficult for players to use existing heroes from the DC Universe. Power level, which is utilized to balance characters, can fluctuate wildly based on the choice of hero. There is no inherent way for each character to shine built into the game. If someone chooses to play Superman, there is the possibility of them easily overshadowing every other character even if they were not meaning to do this.
For those with a taste for a more traditional game, DC Adventures provides the flavor they would prefer. It gives the ability to create whatever you would want without sacrificing the iconic characters that you would expect from DC.
I love comics, super heroes, and role-playing games. Since you are reading this here on Ideology of Madness, I am going to assume that you love these things as well. Allow me to offer you a virtual fist bump. I’ld throw in the shoulder bump but I don’t know you that well. We’ll get there though, I know it. Where was I? I was talking about comics, super heroes, and role-playing games. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying was just recently released in PDF and should hit shelves at your local game store soon. It takes these three things that I enjoy and puts them into one neat package.
Here on Ideology of Madness, Funnybooks is doing a multipart review of the game itself. You can find the guys initial thoughts here. They will be giving you a much more in-depth look at the system, and I don’t want to tread on ground that will be covered soon. What I want to do is point out three things that elevate this game above the standard super hero role-playing game.
First, the game utilizes the Cortex + dice pool mechanic. This is the process where you build a pool of dice from various things on your character sheet with the size of each die representing level of skill. I find this a refreshing way of handling tasks as most other games of this sort either require a bucketful of one type of die or rely on one die to take care of everything. I am a gamer. I have a big bag full of dice that I would love to use and hardly ever get the chance to break out. This game recognizes this fact and actively engages it. Not only that, but the process of gathering dice keeps you engaged in the story and aware of what your character can do most of the time. A secondary benefit of this dice pool mechanic is that it allows the game to engage the player on both the mental and tactile level. It takes the propensity of gamers to play with their dice and makes it an important aspect of the game.
Second is the use of Milestones. A milestone is a character’s connection to the world or the story line and is a unique way of tracking progress. Each character can have up to two Milestones for each adventure. These milestones can either be from the characters data file or from the event in which the character is taking part. This provides a role playing drive for play to help direct decisions made without being to constrictive. It also allows the player to view their character in two different ways. They can take a more granular perspective and use milestones that drive the character personally or choose event-based milestones to help further the plot of the current scenario. This allows for a wide variety of play to occur and be rewarded.
These milestones are what actually makes the third thing work. This is utilizing actual Marvel characters in play. In other games, making use of canon characters can easily devolve into an argument over who gets which iconic character as they are the most powerful. This problem is easily sidestepped with the use of Milestones. They allow you to play whichever character you would like because your advancement is not tied to being a bad-ass, but to accomplishing the goals of the character or the story. This frees up players to choose a character from canon that they would enjoy to play without worrying about being overshadowed as they will get their time in the spotlight to achieve whichever milestone they choose. Personally, this would allow me to play Cloak without having to be concerned about balance as I am going to get my time to shine. Yes, I like Cloak and Dagger. Don’t judge me. The other issue of using canon characters that crops up is which iteration to use. In this game, there will be multiple versions of characters so that you can use the one that fits with the timeline or just choose the one that you like best.
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying captures the feel of comic books while defusing some of the more common problems found in this genre of role-playing game. I look forward to the event books and seeing my favorite character’s data files.
DriveThruRPG: Comicworld Ukraine
For must of us, the Ukraine is just one of those weird places on the Risk map that makes up what we consider Russia. Even with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of so many of the states that formerly made it up, most westerners know nothing about any of these nations beyond that they were formerly part of the Soviet union. We certainly know little or nothing about their culture or history.
Comicworld Ukraine is designed to address this deficiency of knowledge for gamers who are interested in the area or who are simply looking for a new place to set their campaigns. It is written by a self proclaimed Eastern European which gives it an insider point of view and, undoubtedly more accuracy. This fact also shows in the writing style. There is more than one occasion where it is clear that the writer is not a native English speaker. It is certainly not bad and there have been any number of products by people whose first language is English that were much more incomprehensible, but occasionally, the author’s use of possessives especially is jarring.
Perhaps because the author is a native of the area, he is able to pack a great deal of information about the culture and the flavor of the country into this product. While it is generic enough that it could be used as a resource for any super hero, or just any game set in modern times, it is designed with Icons in mind. As such, qualities and challenges appropriate for the area and culture are provided throughout the product. Adventure seeds that are geared toward the turmoil and landmarks specific to the country are also provided, making it possible for even someone who knows nothing about the area to create adventures and campaigns that feel accurate for the country. Read the rest of this entry »
Spelljammer is the best D&D setting ever.
That’s right, I said it and I mean it. Read it again. Best. Setting. Ever.
Does it have some ridiculous elements? Sure. I’m not going to deny that the Giff and Space Hamsters aren’t jokes, though I believe both were intentionally meant as jokes. And yes, physics are different from what we know, but then every D&D game includes people throwing fire and electricity from their hands and the possibility of a person surviving a fall at terminal velocity. And what D&D setting doesn’t have its ridiculous elements? Dragonlance has not one, not two, but three distinct races which can only be called comedic relief. If someone argues that they can play a Kender seriously, kick them out of your game and gaming group. There are more layoffs and re-orgs in the Forgotten Realms pantheon than in a telecom company and almost as many employees. It seems that the warforged in Eberron were made specifically to shut up that one player in every group who actually wants to play sci-fi rather than swords and sorcery. And if I wanted to play Mad Max in D&D I would play Gamma World, not Dark Sun.
For those of you who don’t know the glory of Spelljammer, it was a campaign setting in the early 90’s which took D&D into space. Through magic and some alternate interpretations of physics (just because that’s the way gravity works in our reality doesn’t mean it has to work that way in the D&D universe) players were able to take their characters off their home worlds and send them adventuring throughout the vast expanses of space, allowing them to fight dragons and explore dungeons on all manner of worlds. At its best, a Spelljammer campaign can combine the best elements of Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Lord of the Rings. At its worst it can be Starship Troopers crossed with Cutthroat Island and, any of the D&D movies.
Though there is a distinct possibility of awful, there is a good chance for awesome with Spelljammer. To this end, I’m always happy to see people adapt the Spelljammer concept to new systems and that is exactly what Voidjumpers of Space does. Voidjumpers drags Spelljammer into the new millennium by adapting the idea for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Read the rest of this entry »
Thousands and thousands of citizens at risk… Villains and monsters are loose to wreak havoc. Can the Knights of Reignsborough put an end to this crisis… can Bon Jovi be saved?
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GM’s note: Knights of Reignsborough is a role playing game actual play podcast. It is not our intent to teach a system, rather to entertain. As such, much of the game mechanic discussion has been edited from the audio.
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