The Demolished Ones Review Perfectly controlled explosion or scattered rubble?

Summary

A mystery in FATE? I would typically be uninspired by this sort of thing. It is not that you could not run an investigation using this lighter rules system, rather that the system does not explicitly support it like systems such as Gumshoe. However, I'm pleased to be disproved by The Demolished Ones by Brian England and Rite Publishing. This setting creates a compelling cinematic Victorian-themed Noir mystery by playing to FATE's strength, character backgrounds, by making who your characters are the true mystery.

This product has a clean two-column layout with unobtrusive background art inlaid. The evocative art sprinkled throughout the book meshes well with the gaslamp aesthetic as well as the black-and-white format. The handouts in particular are well-executed. The whole thing comes to 88 pages which is packed with to-the-point content and an accessible brevity.

The base mechanics follow the same sort of lighter bent, much like the recently released FATE Core. Resolution, for those unfamiliar, is based on rolling 4 fudge dice, which have blanks, plusses, and minuses, yielding a result of -4 to +4 biased toward +0. This is added to a skill value, which is then compared against a difficulty. Beyond this mechanic, the true engine of the game is FATE points and aspects. FATE points are an economy which rewards accepting poor choices based on aspects which describe character background or unfortunate circumstances. These are then spent to allow PCs to influence the plot at times of their choosing based on character background or fortuitous circumstances. This product provides a clean, uncluttered, and nicely brief explanation of the rules, and the light mechanics seem to fit well with the setting.

The flavor of this product is reflected in mechanics through the Stress tracks (here Health and Composure), Skills (Engineering, Science, Slight of Hand), the use of aspects to reflect temporary and permanent Gear, and some especially powerful aspects that can have special features at extra cost. However, the real innovation is how characters are made. This game is about discovering the mystery of yourself, and using a re-imagining of the on-the-fly character generation to build, rebuild, and perhaps destroy who you thought you were, all based on progression in the plot. This is where the mystery lies, and is reflected eloquently in how you build your character as you move along.

Overall, the tightness of the narrative is reminiscent of other great games and novels of self-discovery, notably Aletheia, another great mystery game. This is a well-thought out product which targets a particular play style and is incredibly accessible, the kind of game which could bring in new players that are huge mystery fans. I'm left with the lingering impression that with the right type of group, this could be the kind of campaign which can help shape a very memorable experience.

Original Review here: http://agameofwhits.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-demolished-ones-review.html

Achtung Cthulhu! The Trellborg Monstrosities Read-through Review Scandinavian Stupendousness or Wartime Weariness?

Summary

In the Trellborg Monstrosities by John Houlihan and the folks at Modiphius, A crack team of the British Special Boat Section and vetted experts journey into the far north to unravel the Nazi's interest in the town of Trellborg. They will uncover the dark mysteries in a set of 5 adventures which form the arc of this adventure supplement. Each has enough material for a session, more if you run at the slower speed I usually work through published materials.

The whole thing comes to around 51 pages, which is packed with adventuring material and background. This is nicely accompanied by resources to help run the game. Notably, some nice handouts and a short novella around the events of the adventure up the overall quality of this adventure. The production value is nicely consistent with the past adventures released (Three Kings in particular) in terms of both art and layout. I'm a little less wild about some of the NPC specific art, but these and the handouts both evoke that classic Call of Cthulhu flavor.

A major objection I had in the first Achtung Cthulhu! adventure, Three Kings, was that run straight from the Call of Cthulhu rules the encounters seemed combat heavy and likely quite deadly given that the system is oriented away from combat at its core. It's night and day with a Savage Worlds conversion with the Realms of Cthulhu setting book rules, which really highlights the pulpy aspects and relishes the combat encounters.

Realms of Cthulhu also offers dials on the deadliness and degree of mind blasting, which in this adventure could be used to change the tone from pulpy horror to gritty wartime to suit a group. I'll definitely be picking up any future adventures with this rules conversion.

The plot and setup is the thing that will make this adventure or break when you sit down to the table. I don't want to touch the sandbox vs. railroad debate because its rather moot, these are just tools in the GM kit (See Monte Cook's recent post for a well-articulated discussion). This is a structured adventure, it will take you to some awesome places if you go along for the ride. It has some elements, like redirecting contingencies and an NPC that is nudging a little toward a powerful GM PC.

The adventure "knows" this and the author gives clear indication and the pitfalls to note. This is all in service of creating a memorable narrative and lots of cinematic action. It helps hit on the classic pulp cliches like crazy Nazi occultists, monsters, and beating impossible odds. The setting is undeniably spooky, with the environment as much an enemy as anything else. It also, to my knowledge of Nazi occult (mostly derived from recent Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff episodes), the events depicted fit into that nice niche of ridiculous-yet-plausible.

There is a fair amount of investigation and inquiry to evoke the Mythos flavor, but its generally moved along by the action scenes. In short, you will never see the rails in all likelihood, but if your group bucks at this prospect whenever they see it, you'll have some extra work in this adventure. I want to emphasize the choice the author made here by design, rather than accident.

Overall, this is a great product for setting up a nice short campaign arc, converted to a system which plays to the flavor of the setting well. The consistency between this and the first product professes to the continuation of a high-quality product line. It also increases my excitement for the GM and Investigator's Guides, which will be the product of Modiphius' recently funded Kickstarter.

See the original review here: http://agameofwhits.blogspot.com/2013/07/achtung-cthulhu-trellborg-monstrosities.html

Dungeon World Review Gygaxian Goodness or Mazes and Monsters?

Read the original review here: http://agameofwhits.blogspot.com/2012/12/dungeon-world-review.html

Summary

The newest foray into the fantasy dungeon crawler is Dungeon World, a game which emphasizes narrative flow and player participation for fast action and old-fashioned fun. It is based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and Dungeon World carries on the design aesthetic and accessibility that its source provided. It has a few bumps and minor issues in the rules, but these are dwarfed by the originality and loyalty to the feel of the original Dungeons and Dragons.

In-depth Read-through

In terms of the overall structure, Dungeon World has a nice artful introduction. The opening text immediately impresses the aesthetics of the game and a notable focus on the unique character each class in Dungeons and Dragons. A simple one-column design and legible fonts provide a clean look, if a little sparing. We can see the influence of the role-playing game as party game style, reminiscent of titles like Fiasco, in the accessibility and brevity of the what is role-playing section. This continues in the basic play section, which outlines the mechanics of what makes Dungeon World work. This is a nicely written section, but is badly in need of the basic moves cheat sheet being moved right to the start, so that we have a depiction of the moves before laying out mechanics that depend on them strongly.

Dungeon World, like Apocalypse World before it, runs on a core mechanic of player-facing, player-guided rolls, with a GM painting the landscape, foes, and supporting characters just ahead of the players, as well as pasting together any gaps in the narrative. Moves are the basic unit in this rule system, a set of bins into which an action is categorized before dice start rolling. This is not unlike many other games, but the mechanic is player-facing, actions in the game are focused on the player characters rather than round-based with a lot of NPC actions.

Further, a player essentially knows what the roll result means, based on the move they took. This shifts a lot of the work off the GM once you have players used to the system. It also gives the players a lot more freedom to shape the narrative.

On this core framework Dungeon World layers on the flavor and combat mechanics needed to evoke the flavor of dungeon-crawling without a huge rules infrastructure to support it. Almost all of these add interesting flavor to the game, like the awesome henchman mechanic which can help with player absence, a fun camping move, or the flavor of classic spell-casting differences between classes. A few fall a little flat and seem to clash with the simple flavor, like Alignment or Encumbrance. I see that the idea with alignment was to emulate the source material, but it feels like the moral restriction clashes with the free choice aesthetic in the game, and allowing Evil PCs is perhaps more problematic as they can earn XP by clashing with other players. Encumbrance, similarly, seems out of place. Why are we tracking every piece of equipment when most of us house-ruled it away in most D&D editions? These could be easily fixed with some house rules, and perhaps this is just my personal taste, but a few rules seem like odd additions. Overall the flavor added by these secondary mechanics are evocative and fun.

A nice structuring tool called Fronts is also described. A front builds up multiple tracks of unfolding events which come to a dramatic conclusion. Its a good solution for a GM if their players have a tendency to meander when given a lot of plot control. This is further supported with advice on campaign design and some neat rules for populating a campaign world as the players move to a larger and larger scale. Similarly, monster building is given a thorough treatment with an eye toward challenging the party. There is also a beefy section describing all the beasties, followed by the loot you might "liberate" from their corpses.

Finally, we close out with a few forward-thinking sections that really make this product. The first covers how to hack the system to do different things, everything from how to make a special set-piece to an adventure with unique moves to make on it, to creating brand new moves and even classes from scratch. It's neat to see the authors taking time to explain their ideas and design philosophy, and its a cool nod to its progenitor, Apocalypse World.
We also have several appendices to aid play, but I'll focus on adventure conversion. What long-time gamer doesn't have a favorite dungeon delving quest they'd love to scrabble through one more time? It's great to have a very explicit guide on what to use from the Dungeon World book, what to convert wholesale, and what to recast or omit. I think this is a good example of a small amount of extra work giving exactly what the fans want.

Overall, I recommend Dungeon World for a new take on a well-worn genre, good for a quick night of fun or a full-fledged revisiting of a classic dungeon adventure.

Note that this review reflects the full 410 page book, rather than the open license or demo versions.

Here are the key points of this high quality product:

† Excellent art, layout, and plot structuring that make reading and running this an easy job for your GM. † The tone of this campaign nicely evokes pulp and thriller themes that fit well with the setting. † The kind of respect for source material and a spirit of accuracy that harkens back to the roots of Call of Cthulhu. † I worry this might be a wee bit deadly for Call of Cthulhu specifically, not a problem for other systems. † This is definitely episodic, so you'll probably want to purchase the series if you plan to play this campaign. † The material is for this campaign specifically, suggestions for a longer campaign are given, but this isn't a setting book per se.

For a full review and audio version see: http://agameofwhits.blogspot.com/2012/05/ep21-achtung-cthulhu-review-zero-point.html

Overall the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game is a blending of the good parts of several games. First and foremost it takes the CortexPlus system, of creating dice pools based on categories of abilities. It is like Smallville in that some abilities are relational, though nothing as complicated. It is like Leverage in that you also have abilities that are better than others, and takes the same approach with Super Powers. It has taken lessons about aspects, placing aspects of scenes, and a fate point-style mechanic from Spirit of the Century/FATE. Similar to Dresden Files, the fate points (Plot Points in MHRBG) serve as the game-play balance of heroes with disparate power levels. Taken together these create a game which traditionalists probably won't love; However comic book enthusiasts, new RPG players, and the indie crowd will love. The book itself is fairly well laid out, the art could have been punchier but its very well organized at a typeface that is comfy and a writing style that is easy on the reader. It has a good index, cheat sheets, and chapters that follow the flow of play.

The Good Parts

Good Mechanics, especially around XP, Pacing, and Super Power scope. Has equally complex rules for duking it out with Doc Ock or negotiating for equal treatments for Mutants. Passes the True Supers Test: Batman and Superman could fight each other, Batman could possibly win.

The Iffy Bits

The lack of super-structured Character Generation is going to leave some scratching their heads. In long-term play I'm left a little uncertain on how to handle some particulars, what if I end partway through an adventure, what do I do if the Players want to take a new direction, what if someone dies? An experienced GM can handle this, but this book seems aimed a newbies who could use a wee bit more structure. The book could have highlighted the fact that supers with lots of powers get less PP, those who are weaker get more. Someone naive to this might get in fights in the group over balance, without a strong guiding hand by the GM.

Read the Full Review at: http://agameofwhits.blogspot.com/2012/02/read-through-review-marvel-heroic.html#more