Ravenous Role Playing

Free RPG Day is right around the corner. It’s this Saturday (the 18th) as a matter of fact. You know what that means, right? A handful of goodies that are free and I’ll be reviewing them all here on the blog within a month or so of getting them.

I can’t wait to see what I can land this year. I never look at the list of what is available ahead of time. I want to show up at my FLGS, pick up the stack of goods and make a purchase or three before running home with my loot. Once I get home, I crack into the pile of books and what-not and see what new things I can discover!

While the book from Paizo was a fantastic adventure, it really fell short of the purpose of Free RPG Day. This was not an introduction to the game that would attract new players. Paizo missed the mark and published something that required their Pathfinder Core book, and the Pathfinder Bestiary. I’m an experienced (well, as experienced as you can be with the new system) Pathfinder player, and a very long in the tooth GM with all sorts of systems. I couldn’t have run this adventure without referring to many different pages of the Bestiary. The only upside is that they gave me the pages numbers to use. This was a polished, finished, well written adventure, but that’s not what I’m looking for in Free RPG Day stuff.

Having said all that, I have to say that Paizo did do their jobs well. Instead of trying to entice people to buy the game as first-time players, they did their best to tempt people to purchase the Advanced Players Guide (APG) that came out not too long ago. They did this by providing pregenerated characters that were solely from the new book. I guess it was an attempt to give people a taste of the new book and show off all of the cool stuff that could be found in the APG.

Even though I’m not a fan of the content of the book, the production value is very high (I’d expect nothing less of Paizo) and the adventure is a great one for a one-shot or at a conference. It’s built just right for that, and the creators even recognized this fact by including a photocopy-able Pathfinder Society Chronicle Sheet for use in such a thing.

Grade: A-  (Great content, quality work and great production value, but it’s lacking the “draw in new players” feel that I got from the other items in the Free RPG Day offerings.)

This is a wonderfully put together book that packs in quite a bit of information in a mere 31 pages. Anyone who has never run a game before could pick this up and have a really good chance at running the adventure included. The rules are clearly explained. The combat system explanation is phenomenal and includes information that every single Free RPG Day book thus far has simply left out under the assumption that the reader is an experienced RPGer. Even the pregenerated characters in the back of the book are highly detailed and appears to include every piece of information necessary to run them without referring to another resource.

I had heard of the L5R system of XkY, but hadn’t really had it explained well to me until I read this book. The roll X, keep Y method is very intriguing to me. Basically, this means that the player would roll X dice, but only add up Y of them to find their grand total. Example: 6k3 means that the player would roll 6d10, but only keep the (presumably) highest 3 dice and total them up to find a final result.

There were two downsides I found in the book. The first was that the adventure included in the book left me a little dry. I’m not quite sure why and can’t put my finger on it, but it just didn’t strike any chords with me. The second downside was the really small font that they used in the book. Perhaps that’s how they managed to pack in so much information.

Grade: A

This short 16 page book contains everything a group needs to run through a short adventure. When I say everything, I mean everything! It has pregenerated characters, rules, introductions, equipment descriptions, monsters, bad guys and a plotline to follow. During the course of the adventure, the rules are explained very well and sample skill checks are given to explain what the characters should do mechanics-wise to get out of the tight spot that they’re in. This is a great taste and starter for anyone interested in running the Ubiquity system or Hollow Earth.

My chief complaint about the story is that it starts in New York and ends with the characters being transported to Hollow Earth. I’d rather see more of the adventure set in Hollow Earth. Having said that, the game does capture the flavor and style of Hollow Earth (as far as I know it.)

Will I run out and buy Hollow Earth stuff based off of this mini-adventure? No. As well written as the book is, I just don’t like the Ubiquity system. I love dice pools, but having a 50/50 shot of each die coming up as a success limits the system too much. Sure, I could always hand out more dice, or apply penalties to take away dice, or increase the number of successes required to alter the percentages, but I prefer a d10 dice pool with a target number for each die and a number of required successes. It allows for a smoother curve of changing difficulty for the overall process of dice rolling. Then again, that’s just my personal opinion on the matter. Some of you out there may love the Ubiquity system for its simplicity and ease of use. I can certainly admire the system for those qualities.

Grade: A+

Like many White Wolf products, this book is a small (very small, actually) part of a larger whole. If you don’t have the larger whole, the smaller part doesn’t really make much sense. I’m sure that there are some Exalted fans out there that would love to have this 32 page book in order to complete their collection. Me? Nah. Not really. I read the first 5 pages, and then started skimming to see if I would get to something that made sense to me. I didn’t find such a thing. In the end, I went through looking for a map or three to tie together all of the locations that were detailed, but I didn’t find such a thing. I’m sure I could have read the book in greater detail, but unfortunately, I can’t run this without investing a great deal of money into their books for the gaming system.

I guess White Wolf just wanted to throw a bone to their faithful Exalted player base and give a few of them the jollies of owning something rare. I just didn’t get the purpose of the book at all other than maybe that one thing.

Grade: D-  (It would have been an F, but the writing for the back story was fantastic and very engaging.)

Bloodsand Arena is WotC’s introduction to Athas, the world of Darksun. The books are already on the shelves, but when Free RPG Day happened, they were slated for a month or three release date out from June. I have not had a chance to even glimpse the innards of any recent Darksun books, and this is because I’ve not made the time. I’ve seen them on shelves, but walked right past them to more lush offerings. Darksun never did catch my interest, and the more I learn about D&D 4e and the more I read the books and the more I play it (which is rare, I’ll admit) the less I like the system or settings. I just have a bad taste in my mouth from the World-of-Warcraftification of my favorite RPG. However, that’s a rant for another day. I’m here to review Bloodsand Arena.

The cover has some amazing artwork on it and some good maps on the internal sides of the cover. My only complaint at this point is that I wish the grid lines on the internal maps were a little thicker to make them stand out more. It’s a cartography thing, I guess.

The character cards that come with the game are excellent and well put together. I can imagine that it would be a breeze to simply shuffle the cards and hand them out to the players at random, or toss them in the middle of the table and have them fight over it (or bid on them like Amber?)

The large fold-out map that comes with the game is excellent for miniature combat situations, which is what I imagined they intended the large maps to be used for. Instead of breaking out the battlemat and markers, it’s possible to just use the maps provided as-is. I like this quite a bit and I wish more games included features like this. It would be worth the extra $5 to $10 dollars to me.

Lastly, the 24 page book gives a brief on the world, setting, environment, geography and socio-political make up of Athas. After reading this, I remember now why I never did like the world. It’s too brutal for my tastes. No. I don’t like everything wrapped up in a pretty little package with a bow on top, but I do want my players to have a chance to live to see second level. Ok. Sorry. Enough of that rant.

Once Athas and the immediate surroundings are laid out, the adventure starts. In typical WotC fashion, the adventures are very well put together, outlined for the GM and players wonderfully, described clearly and the monster stat blocks are immensely useful. It took WotC a long time from purchasing TSR to finally get this down and get it right. I hope they continue to do well in this area.

Both adventures (yep, there are two!) seem to be very fun to run and play in, but not in the world of Athas. At least, not for me.

One final thought is that you need the D&D 4e books to run these adventures. This is not a stand-alone book to entice new players to join the game like most other Free RPG Day offerings. I’d rather see Free RPG Day stuff bring in new players, not try to get existing players to buy more stuff.

Grade: A  (Though, I’m still not enticed to buy any more D&D 4e stuff or Darksun materials.)

This “book” was actually a magazine preview for a new publication, which threw me off at first. Once I realized what was going on, I started judging each article on its own merits and then the magazine as a whole.

The “Dead Things” mini-game was actually quite impressive in its layout and how quickly someone could pick up on the rules. The game is very similar to the popular Zombies! tile-based game that I’ve played a few times. The general premise is the same: Make your way from the start to the finish while traversing a field of zombies. The rules appeared to be smooth and well thought out, but that’s hard to say without playing it first. Since I already have a decent amount of cash sunk into Zombies! and know those rules, I’ll probably stick with the people that have already cornered the market.

The next article detailed six spells for creating monsters. The spells were intended for use in Labyrinth Lord or Mutant Future, but could easily be ported to D&D 3.0/3.5 or maybe even Pathfinder. The spells themselves were pretty good and seemed to me to be fairly balanced.

After the spells came a two page article about quarries. I would have picked a more exciting topic to give away in order to entice a greater number of purchases of their book that contains similar articles. The quarry piece was well written, well researched and clearly stated. I may get online and see if I can find more previews for their City Builder: A Guide to Designing Communities to see if it’s worth purchasing.

Next came a monster entry featuring the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. The cat was fairly balanced, well written and quite usable in a D&D 3.0/3.5 or other OGL system even though the intended audience is Pathfinder.

Following this was a two page article that I just could not bring myself to read because of the strange font that was used. Due to the font, everything on the page was fuzzy and unclear. I did look closer. This was not caused by misprinting or a bad run at the printer. It’s definitely the font causing my issues. I’d recommend to the publisher to pick a standard font that is clear and legible and stick with it throughout their publications.

It seemed to me that the folks at Skirmisher Press are trying to attract a large crowd from a wide variety of games. I’m afraid they’re going to miss the mark on all of them. Most people are fairly fanatic about their systems and only want supplements dedicated to their cause. By targeting multiple game systems, the people that they’re going to attract are going to be limited in nature, I think. I wish them all the luck in the world and great success, but I don’t see it happening because of the “jack of all trades” approach.

Grade: B-

The introduction to Deathwatch from Fantasy Flight Games has an incredibly high production value for being a free module. The paper was thick, the artwork fit the theme and mood of the book and was well done, the printing quality was very high, and over all, I was quite impressed with what I held in my hands.

The first part of the book is a brief introduction to the theme of the game followed by some pre-generated characters for use in the module that fell at the end of the book. Pages 8-21 held the basic rules of the system and then the remainder of the book was a well-thought-out and well-written adventure for the system. Basically, this is everything a group needs to play the system, game, characters and adventure presented. That, in my opinion, makes this a great freebie to give out and entice people to run off and buy the Deathwatch game. This is very much like the Rogue Trader game that was part of the Free RPG Day from last year.

However, the content, material and concept behind the game left me cold. It’s all about playing Space Marines in the Emperor’s military forces that have been elevated to the elite troops of the Deathwatch. This just doesn’t grab me. It sets up the game to be a run and gun type of science fiction game instead of one in which the players are making cool discoveries and exploring strange new worlds. I can imagine that the game could be played in the vein that I would appreciate, but that’s not the core focus of the game. If I were to pick up either Rogue Trader or Deathwatch, I’d probably lean toward Rogue Trader. However, there are groups out there that want the run and gun style of playing and this system and concept are tailor made for those groups.

Even though the ideas presented in the book didn’t grab me, I still see this as a high quality game.

Grade: A-

The adventure, “Abominations of the Amazon,” written by Mike Ferguson and produced by Goodman Games is a decent introduction to the system of Call of Cthulhu, but the adventure does require the core book to run properly. It’s a great way to introduce players to the system, but not new game masters. I found myself wondering how various rules worked and such, and felt like I needed the main book in my hands to run the game properly. I’ve played in a CoC game in the distant past, but never run it. I suppose if I were more familiar with the game, then the adventure would have flowed better for me.

Aside from the lack of knowledge on my part, the adventure read very smoothly, was very well laid out and had some excellent maps and handouts to go with it. I could see this being run in a night or two and possibly hooking some players to the system.

My chief complaint is that the “horror” of the adventure was purely mechanical. There wasn’t much in the descriptions, box text or overall game that invoked the raw terror one feels when reading an H.P. Lovecraft story. It makes me wonder how much Lovecraft Mr. Ferguson has read in the recent past and if he wanted to apply any of that reading to the adventure. I just feel that a greater sense of terror invoked in the players not the characters could have been useful in setting the mood. Maybe that’s just me.

Grade: B+

Some of you may be wondering where the reviews of the Free RPG Day stuff from almost three months ago are at? Well, I finally found the lost pile of stuff after cleaning my office out and am starting to delve into it. I have nine products to go through, and I hope to do a review every few days for each of them. The first review will most likely post today or tomorrow, and then we’ll be off and running from there.

Stay tuned!