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I'll start off by saying that Science Fiction is my favorite genre. While that's true, I've never cared for the classic SciFi style, until I read this game. Cosmic Patrol presents it's setting in an exciting way that's at the same time a quick read and very informative.
The rules for Cosmic Patrol are incredibly light, focusing on narration and quick resolution for Contests and Tests. Play focuses on a round-robin narration style, with each player narrating their character's actions for a turn before beginning a new turn. The players each have a pool of Plot Points that they can use to affect the narrative during each turn. These points are extremely powerful as they can be used for almost anything.
The game functions without a GM, opting instead for a position called a Lead Narrator that rotates between scenes. The game session is guided overall by a Mission Brief that presents the challenges and enemies that the Cosmic Patrolmen will encounter and this provides the starting point and directions for each scene that occurs in the game.
At first, I was worried about this game. I was afraid that it would work, but the simplicity of the system has an elegance to it that I'm really starting to enjoy the more I think about it. The freedom allowed in the narrative seems to be without horizon.
One thing I didn't like was the introduction information at the very beginning. The book defines a roleplaying game. It defines dice. It even defines imagination. If this is a book to introduce someone to the hobby of roleplaying, that's fine, but the detail was a little much, to my way of thinking.
I'm very excited to give this game a shot.
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The images in this art pack are very good quality. I love the assortment of poses, as well. The character model is very attractive and a good deal of the poses are very sexy. There is one pose that I consider powerful and a couple that are more flirty than sexy. I'm glad that variety was added. Each pose has a high quality PNG with a blank background and another JPG with the background shown in the sample. These are great images.
The only think I'd consider a Con is the scarcity of extra personality in the poses. It would have been great to see a more powerful pose, as well as a meek or frightened pose. All in all, this is a great art set.
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If you enjoy the Smallville RPG, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book as well. High School Yearbook is all about how to run stories of drama set during that very difficult time in a teen's life. The book has detailed discussions on motivations and challenges that any young adult faces as they are on that quest to discover who they are and what they want out of life.
The art in the book are screenshots of the show, as could be expected. The layout is very easy to follow and the book uses two different types of sidebar to give additional information on how the book text could be used.
My favorite part of the book is the new rule, Cliques. How many times, on TV, do we see a group of kids, the Clique, go and confront a lone character? The Clique rules allow you to have a group of like minded individuals acting like a Feature in the game. It won't be very hard to use Cliques in your game, as this book is loaded with examples and sample Cliques, along with the people and places that go along with them.
The discussions and rules presented in High School Yearbook are useful for any game, not just a story of High School Drama. If you like the Smallville RPG, this book will add to your story options.
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Amaranthine – A Review
This is another great game from Machine Age Productions. Despite coming to this game with the expectation of it being rather rules light and being wrong, this game has a lot to offer and a lot to bring to the table.
PROS: The setting is absolutely amazing. The idea of walking around as a closet immortal, only to realize what you are when you run into another immortal, is great fun. The way the Amaranthine remember their past lives makes this game very interesting and very collaborative. I like that. The game also uses a Relationship Wheel mechanic to help track how your Amaranthine feels about the people who are important to him/her. The Relationship wheel is full of narrative interest and is a wonderful tool to know instantly, at a glance, what your character feels about another. The cues it gives you make it so easy to glance at the wheel and run with roleplaying and have the interactions between characters be vibrant and ever-changing. The writing in this book is also top-notch. I especially like the in-character little descriptors for the Maneuvers as they bring a lot of color to the world of the Amaranthine and really make it pop. Amaranthine is also released under the Creative Commons license, so that makes it super easy to share it with your friends and get them excited to play it. And they will get excited. The mechanics provide a tiered complexity so you can choose how much you want them in your game. The mechanics support a narrative style game with minimal dice rolls.
CONS: The book is a bit large, weighing in at 212 pages. Most of the pages are pure text and, while the text is very well written, it can get tiring to read and read, and read. Especially since the mechanics are a bit complex. It took me two reads to wrap my head around them, but once I did, I saw the elegance of the system. I also thought that several of the images were unfinished and really took me out of being immersed in the book. Most of the images look very finished and descriptive, but several were in a loose, watercolor painting style that didn't draw me in.
All in all, I think this is a wonderful game and give it 4-stars! I definitely recommend picking it up and giving it a go with your game group. The game really appears to focuses on inter-character drama and makes it exciting to see what else happened in your character's past. This is a high quality game that you don't want to miss.
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This is the first Battletech novel that I have ever read. I found it to be an entertaining read. The book follows the characters across a span of time during the end of a civil war. Each chapter is headed up by a location and a date to let the reader know where the characters were at a glance. While the story was entertaining, I found the descriptions of the 'Mech combat to be lacking punch and rather "blow-by-blow" than exciting. The characters didn't change much during the story and their moves became predictable by the middle. Still, even with that, the events are very broad and tell a fun story.
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Ah, Rapture! Several weeks ago a friend told me about this game, and I promptly forgot about it until I saw it floating around here on DriveThru. The premise is very religious in nature. God has returned and taken the righteous unto him, and cleansed the Earth by fire. And only the Earth. Man's outworld colonies and expansion efforts were of, apparently, no interest to him. As Earth served as the communications hub for all of Man's endeavors, everyone is instantaneously plunged into a communications blackout, without any idea as to what is going on. This premise is very interesting and provides a lot of ideas and problems to explore. The rules are very simple and are very easy to get the hang of. Creating your PC is a simple and quick task. Yet, for it's simplicity, some of the things that define your character will make for extremely interesting PC/PC interaction. With each PC having a differing religious view and/or political allegiance, the possibility for amazing fireworks is unlimited. The layout of the book was good, although the white text on black background made me go cross-eyed for the first few pages until my eyes got used to it. Also, the text was rife with spelling and grammar errors. However, these are extremely minor complaints and I don't feel that they detract from the book or the game much, if at all. This book is a quick read and the material is well presented and easy to understand. Despite it's flaws, I think this is a great game with a great setting and a good presentation!
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This game has many options for the Hard Scifi fan. The amount of detail in the book is absolutely astounding. If a situation comes up in game, and you're not sure how to handle it, there's likely a description of how to go about resolving it in the book. Character generation is quick and fun, but almost entirely random. While it IS a lot of fun, I would have liked to see rules for a more planned out character generation process. I can easily think of some hacks to make it less random, but it would have been nice to see them in the book. Ship and Planet creation looks like it will take a bit of work. I, for one, would enjoy doing that, I just haven't had a chance to set the time aside and do it. There are a LOT of options for you to custom build what you want. When reading the book, the game seemed more complicated that I believe it actually is, simply because there are some many options for the players to choose from. Character advancement/growth occurs through putting your character in stressful situations. I love that, but really wanted to see an alternate method added in for training up skills. This system appears to do away with XP completely, which is a bonus, as now I can concentrate on the story and have my character get better organically, with all growth tied directly to the story and events that occur in game. As a Hard Scifi fan, this game has a lot of things that make me giddy and revving at the gate to play it.
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Este libro es mucho mas de lo que pense. La pantalla del Guardian es una herramienta esencial para juegos de GUMSHOE, con resumenes de reglas de combate, estadisticas de armas y reglas para cordura. Pero, el libro es el premio de este tesoro. Empieza con una vista a las habilidades y como usarlas de maneras diferentes a lo normal, segun las reglas presentadas en el primer libro. Y tambien muestra unos conceptos y maneras de trabajar de los anos 30, en donde suceden las historias de Cthulhu. Despues, nos presentan con unos PNJ para usar durante el juego. Los detalles de PNJ que presentan me encantan, y dan a los jugadores algo que recordar de cada personaje y los ganchos son muy utiles. Considerando todo, este libro es esencial para cualquier Guardian que quiera jugar este juego. Una queja: Me dieron la impresion que el libro tambien tendria pistas y sugerencias para estilos mas improvisadas. No encontre informacion sobre esa tema.
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I purchased the hardcover print edition of this book. In regards to the printing, the pages seemed a little thin for my liking, but the cover was very nice and the book was very well bound. I have no complaints there.
As far as the game goes, the setting is phenomenal! It stimulates my imagination as I read through the book and myriads of stories and scenes pop into my head, just waiting to be seen in a game! If only for the setting, alone, this book is way worth getting.
The system leaves much to be desired. It appears to be a version of Savage Worlds, but without the good things I love about SW. The character generation options are confusing and the rules are a bit more complex that I feel they need to be. The char gen options are also rather limited. I'm sure there are people who will love the system, but I'm not one of them.
All in all, this book is worth it! If you want to play in a world of dark heroes, where the criminals are the good-guys and the superheroes are on the run, this is the game for you!
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This product has me as giddy as a school girl. Scifi is my favorite genre and the nWoD is one of my favorite systems. And This. Book. Rocks! I downloaded it as soon as I found it available and devoured it. It is filled with ideas and variations for all the different monsters in the WoD and shows how to create space ships! And space has gates! Of course, with their own, World of DARKness flavor. This book is amazing and has me jumping up and down. I'm crazy excited about this supplement. The rules for Other creation are excellent. You want to play an alien? Well, you can. And you can make the alien into pretty much anything you want, by choosing several qualities from a very comprehensive list. This supplement goes on the assumption that the veils of secrecy surrounding the monsters have been dropped, but even so, you could change things a bit to maintain that secrecy. True to it's Mirrors origins, this book is a toolkit of things. Take what you want, leave what you don't. I'm excited to play nWoD Space Opera!
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A nice collection of Hot Chicks in a useful calendar. Sadly, it seems that it's of limited utility as other than eye-candy as you can't put the PDF on your desktop and printing high quality could be problematic.
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This is a good collection of some scifi soldier art. Whether you prefer lineart, or toned art, it's got versions of both for all the subjects. The file sizes are good and the download is not huge.
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The reviews this product has already received are so well written, I hardly think I have much to add. As a scifi enthusiast, I'm always on the lookout for good scifi games. This one has shown itself to be a solid entry. I love the setting. It's interesting and has multiple possibilities for exploration and expansion. I'm looking forward to sitting down with a group to this game.
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Don't let the price put you off on this collection. The number of figures listed is what comes with this collection... but you get multiple stances and actions for each figure. This is a wonderful collection of sexy female Virtual Tabletop tokens. From walking stances, to action stances, to seductive to dead and dying, this collection has it all to reflect your character's state on the screen. I was a little sad that the images were so small as I would have enjoyed being able to partake of the eye-candy as a much larger percentage of the screen. However, that's not what it's about. And the figures are very attractive with some attractive costumes.
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I'm not a Pathfinder player and haven't played D&D for years, but this supplement piqued my interest. I love the idea that magic is dangerous. I like the way it's implemented in this supplement. Having each spell cast come down to a Spellcasting roll is great, especially as the caster has options and sacrifices they can do to boost the possibility that the spell will succeed. I was slightly disappointed in the Rituals, as they basically come down to a single Spellcraft roll and GP expenditure. I would have liked them to be a more involved process. I would also have liked to see more dangers inherent in spell poisoning. While I love that someone suffering from it can poison others, I would expect more magical mutations. All in all, I love this supplement. It just may be the book that gets me to play Pathfinder.
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