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Ok, it's free content, and it's for one of the better tabletop games out there.
If you have Outbreak: Undead, get this. There's no reason not to. And it's awesome. Don't believe me? Download it.
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Dark, gritty, grimy. Cipher's got it all. It may not be the happiest setting out there, but the setting and system are well-thought out.
Run from mysterious forces and join some yourself, all while trying to figure out your place in the world. A classic theme, but it never gets old, and with some innovation and solid mechanics, it makes Cipher a product to at least check out.
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Ok, Leverage is basically a mix of spy-fiction and crime-drama (from the criminal's perspective), basically Robin Hood in a modern setting.
The Cortex system works with a mix of simplicity and complexity. The dice rolls and rules are simple and fun, though the character creation takes longer than I'd like, and if someone's gone from the group or joins the group later you'd better have a pre-made character or a lot of time (and maybe cell phones, though most people already have those).
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It's a character sheet, so there's not that much to say, but it's very useful for a game of Against the Dead. Sure d20 character sheets are everywhere, but there are a few things it's helpful to have special places to track, and the sheet is nice and concise in the ways that matter.
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Starcluster has a lot of stuff going for it, and a lot against it.
The system's pretty good, and I really enjoyed the setting in many ways, but there's a sort of do-everything mentality. This isn't necessarily bad, but you'll run into a lot of stuff you don't necessarily need, and a lot of stuff is over-detailed or under-detailed.
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It's free, it's awesome, and it'll greatly speed up your game.
Unless you have all there is to know memorized already, you'll want the SR4 GM screen. It's a lifesaver.
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As all Shadowrun stuff, the Runner's Toolkit is very well done. There's not really too much that can be said about it, it's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin and all the things are pretty self explanatory.
Lots of tools, good for GM's and players, worth a grab if you play SR4 often.
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You're going through the mountain when suddenly you encounter orcs. You draw your sword and charge at them. The orcs stagger drunkenly, but you set upon them with your sword and make quick work of them regardless.
Chronicles of Arax is the sort of fast-paced adventure game where you can sit down and enjoy a game with enough depth to keep your brain working and enough simplicity to get done in a relatively short amount of time.
It's free, too, for crying out loud! The worst that can happen is that you wind up liking it and then buying some of the supplements, or don't and then you just ignore it.
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I'm gonna start this review off with a disclaimer: The concepts of Armageddon and rapture are those things that are sort of a theological black sheep. Some people believe in them, others don't, and anything involving a biblical apocalypse is somewhat of a touchy subject in between most any sects of Christian faith, and certainly between other faiths. As such, a lot of people will find a lot of things in this book, at the least, very politically incorrect. As such, I will limit my review primarily to mechanical and mundane setting critiques (and my traditional digital art griping, but that's me).
I like this book. It feels very much like a theological sci-fi horror, so it achieves everything it sets out to.
Starting off, let's look at the horror stuff. I'm not much of a horror guy, so it's a little beyond my comfort limit, but it's definitely very in tune with Christian theology and the sort of bad things that happen there.
Science-fiction wise, it's pretty hard with the exception of FTL (which good attempts are made to explain with theoretical methods, so it gets a couple points, even though it's a big theoretical) and a couple of things intended to build up a sense of demon-based intervention. I'm gonna take a moment here to point out what I view as a potential inconsistency involving demons here: the game acknowledges evolution as a mechanism created by God, but then disavows disease (and mental disorders too, but that's the thing everyone would attribute to a possession) as a thing of evil spirits (which admittedly transfer from host to host and involve bacterial/viral vectors), which can seem a little inconsistent at first (though it's actually not, but comes really close to being). A note to make is that they do carefully delineate that this is for their setting only, and shouldn't lead to people getting exorcisms for the common cold.
The mechanics are simple, but very, very quick, lending more of a hand to a storytelling format. I actually found that a lot of it made good sense, though I question some of the stats in the Gamemaster's section (there's an emphasis on one demon being weak to fire, which I could see, but the first thing every player will do is kill everything that isn't emitting flames with fire, so it's potentially a poor gameplay decision). Characters are similarly quick to make. Another thing to note about the rules is that for relatively simple character creation a rather different character can be created.
The system for "Extras" is one of the most interesting ways I've seen to reward players for followers while making them both incredibly useful and expendable. It also serves as a buffer for the game's very high (potentially, killer GM'ing is endorsed to such an extent as it benefits the plot, putting it in the upper acceptable bracket of aggression encouragement) mortality rate.
Ok, art gripes. I actually like the art in this a lot. It feels sort of sci-fi grungy apocalypse doom candy shiny fun dark to me, if I were to suddenly lose half of my vocabulary. The cover art is probably enough to show what I mean, a sort of hypersaturated super-dark thing I can only describe in terms that make no sense to anyone but me. I will say this though, it averts my normal "just a lot of photoshop filters over a normal image" gripe, despite the fact that that is what I believe it to be, because it actually feels good and useful. As a minor typesetting gripe, the columns of text don't quite line up, causing my obsessive side to shine through. However, it does a good job of not hurting one's eyes. At one or two parts, I saw some art that didn't fade smoothly into the background, but that's another one of my pet peeves that most people don't seem to care about.
There are also a few homophone/similar spelling word misuse errors, and a few punctuation and grammatical issues, but by the time I get to nit-picking about art and grammar, that means I've run out of actual gripes (which, you will notice, none of were directed towards the system, which is a badge of honor since I can usually find something to dislike). Seriously, though, angels are good, angles are the sort of thing you worry about when building stuff.
I guess if I had to gripe about one part of the system, it would be that the damage dice that are rolled are six-sided, while all other dice are ten-sided. That's how solid the system is (though it is minimalistic and simple, that's not always a bad thing).
Given that all my gripes had to do with the un-political correctness (which I'm not terribly up in arms about), and art/typesetting/grammar gripes, since the setting is well-thought through and has a strong connection to its subject matter, I'll give it a five for making me think, and generally being a fun, enjoyable read when I wasn't nit-picking. Also, the game does a good job of mixing various cultural, religious and political ideologies, even though the strength is primarily in political and cultural ideologies, since the religious focus is entirely Judeo-Christian (and, ostensibly, Muslim, though I didn't see much evidence for that and I wouldn't if there was). That said, it might be hard to find a group willing to play this (at least if you go into all the gory details all at once, if you ease in it may be more tolerable, but reading all the game in one sitting would be a major speed bump for some groups). Also, the price could be an issue, but with the amount of content (maps and an interactive character sheet that can be printed) that comes bundled with it, Rapture: The End of Days shows much more value than some other products.
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Spellbound Kingdoms provides a blend of storytelling and traditional combat system design principles.
It is very heavily focused on dramatic flair and the development of characters, but at the same time allows players to enjoy a game with hard mechanics to back up their game. Combat is one of these examples. There are ways for almost every maneuver to be narrated in a fun and exciting way that adds to the flow of play, but there are still hard mechanics to back up the actions of characters.
The combat system is also very interesting. There are multiple styles (both for magic and mundane combat), which flow from moves which balance a character all the way to very powerful but unbalancing moves, leading to a flow of combat that starts slow, then rapidly speeds up, with the potential to end the combat quickly at the potential cost of falling behind the normal rythm of combat.
Spellbound Kingdoms does everything, but still manages to do so in a way that is very non-imposing, each segment feels like its own segment, and you could run a segment entirely as the master of a thieves' guild or the commander of a massive army, then transition back to a traditional hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, social scenes, or chases through dreary cities.
For taking a unique approach to everything, and finding stuff that just plain works, I give Spellbound Kingdoms a 5/5.
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Well, Die Type System lives up to its name.
I'm torn about starting out with the entirety of the rules, partly because I almost gave up on the book before I got to the fluff. Both are good, mind you, but I'd almost recommend reading the setting first, then the mechanics, because the setting is pretty enjoyable and it'll make the mechanics worth it.
All in all, a good product. My only gripe with it is that it doesn't segment examples clearly from the rest of the text, at least not as much as would be nice. It's still relatively easy and simple to figure out what's an example, but I'd see about making it run congruently with the rules text. Well, maybe I have a second gripe too, there could be some revision for grammatical errors, but that's pretty pedantic, even by my standards, since it's all clear even if you do wind up with many double-takes.
I like it, and it's cool. And awesome. And awesome. Plurality intended, for it is awesomes, if that is possible in one thing.
I give it a five, because it's really, really awesome, as I've said before. Plus, it feels right. I was thinking of all the JRPG's I've ever played while reading it, and that's quite a few.
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I liked this product, but there were several problems with it.
Let's start off with the good. The writing made me chuckle at times (sorry, I don't get dark-setting-depressed much after SLA Industries). There was a lot of content, mostly original or at least not overused. The quotes at the beginning of each chapter help lighten the mood. There was a lot of skill and care shown in the product, and what I understood, I liked. I actually was enjoying myself while reading this, which is always a good starting point. The mechanics I was able to decipher felt good, if a little FASA-reminiscent, but being a FASA/Catalyst Game Labs fan, I'm not too ticked about that.
But, that's what I understood. There was a lot of stuff that was lost in somewhat obtuse writing and order. There was somewhat of a schizophrenic focus, with the game doing almost everything (not that it's bad, but I feel like it could have been encapsulated into a core game, then other stuff like hideouts could have been presented in a separate section). There was a dark, gritty, "woe is me" setting more on a telling than a showing basis. There's a lot of stuff, and it's decent, but it's hard to find just what you need, even with the glossaries in the back. Also, the art at times felt like it was made using a mix of low-res 3d renderings (which were actually not horrible), scanned line art, and Microsoft Paint (also not bad, since it demonstrated some skill), and in a few images multiple methods were used, resulting in parts that almost looked like censor boxes, though their shape clearly denoted a purpose in the composition. And, the most minor and pedantic gripe; it uses Comic Sans. Comic. Sans. Which, admittedly, is a bigger gripe when trying to stay focused for 300 pages, versus a 4 page "Thank you for the cookies" letter from the neighbors, but still pretty pedantic. And since I'm being pedantic, on page 3 there's text with a grayscale image behind it that is the sort of typesetting owie that makes me cringe. Still, it's good that most of my gripes are pedantic pet-peeves, rather than actual flaws, though I would like to see a version with a larger focus on clearness and some of the more advanced, less necessary bits moved out of the central rules and encapsulated in their own sections.
All-in-all, I give it a four for what's in there. To be honest, I'd probably normally give it a three, but it felt like it had the spirit and, frankly, the balls to be a great product. I'd like to see some things changed, but I love it.
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So. Much. Awesome.
Outbreak: Undead is the best zombie tabletop RPG out there, and I can say that without a fear of having to eat my own words. There are other zombie games out there, and indeed other excellent zombie games out there, but none come as close to total perfection and accuracy as Outbreak: Undead.
Opting for a full simulation of a zombie outbreak, this game includes rules for playing yourself or a readily made character, as well as lots of things that could be found over the course of a zombie outbreak, including lots of info about the types and numbers of zombies you may encounter.
I'm really at a loss here. I could go on praising Outbreak: Undead for hours, but the words to describe just how awesome it is escape me. For $20, this will be the best zombie game you could buy.
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Really now, there's not much to say about this. It's Troll in the Corner, Aruneus zombie goodness.
Basically if you wanna have horror/action-movie styled zombies in your Pathfinder, get this. It's short, simple, and awesome, and priced well to boot.
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Shadowrun was my first tabletop game (I mean, theoretically I played Battletech as a wargame before that, but I didn't do the Mechwarrior Roleplaying Game), so I've always had a soft spot for it. However, I will admit that I consider myself a 3rd Edition purist (it's what I have all my stuff for, and the edition with which I am most familiar with the lore and setting of).
So, when I was invited to review the Quick-Start Rules for 4th Edition, I decided to finally relent and review the rules. I like them in some ways, and not in others. It's both more complex and more simple at once; it divides a lot of stuff (i.e. the statistics, of which there are now 9 on the character sheet, as opposed to 3rd Edition's 6) and also seems to categorize some stuff.
All-in-all, though, I take away a more polished, if less free system that is certainly not as bad as what I've heard about it. It seems a little different, and I don't care for the setting as much, but it's certainly one of the better games out there.
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