Ravenous Role Playing

In the past few weeks, I’ve received or bought:

• The Dresden Files RPG that I pre-ordered months ago.
• Mutants and Masterminds and a supplement with a bunch of pregenerated characters.
• Runequest from Mongoose Games
• A variety of items from Free RPG Day.

Now to find the time to go through all of this and start writing some reviews. I’m still not sure what order I’ll be hitting them or when I’ll have a chance to get through all of this new material. I can’t wait to do it, though!

I finished off the Pathfinder Core book while at lunch today. I was nearly done, so it didn’t take too long. This review is of the parts of the book designed for the GM.

Chapter 12: Gamemastering

This chapter gives great words of advice to anyone, new and old, on how to run a game. This includes proper preparation of a session, how to start a campaign, what to do during the game and some tips for higher level/power games. One of the most valuable parts of this chapter was the sidebar about keeping a campaign journal. They are invaluable to any GM that runs a long-term game.

Chapter 13: Environment

Holy cow! The folks at Paizo went all out on this one. There are 35 pages dedicated to all the types of terrain (indoors and out) that could possibly be found on the Material Plane. Sure, there are going to be some weird terrains and places in the outer or elemental planes, but if you’re running a game on an Earth-like planetoid, then I highly recommend this chapter… no matter what game system you’re running. There are some excellent details of terrain, environment, plant life and the difficulties and dangers found in the various terrains. My chief complaint about this chapter is that it is mostly fluff with a few rules scattered about in them. That makes it hard to find the rules.

Chapter 14: Creating NPCs

These 7 pages fell flat for me. I feel that if you’re going to dedicate a “chapter” (it’s in quotes because 7 pages does not a chapter make) to one of the most vital aspects of gaming then it should be at least 20 pages or more. Perhaps they are saving their real work for an “NPCs of Pathfinder” book down the road. If that’s the case, then I’m OK with it. However, the treatment they gave to NPCs was a little too brief. I guess it could be considered a launching pad of sorts, but it doesn’t have much of a runway to allow a new GM to get up to speed before taking flight.

Chapter 15: Magic Items

Like with the spells, I didn’t read every item. I just read the basic rules government magic items and skimmed most of them. I actually found myself reading the artifacts at the end of the magic item listing to see how things were changed or altered. I really liked what I saw in the few items I actually read through. Not much really changed in between D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder other than some rules clarifications. What did change (at least in the writing) was more clarity in the magic item creation process. I thought WotC did a decent enough job with it in 3.0/3.5, but the Paizo folks cleared up a few of the finer points of the rules.

Appendices

The appendices of the book included information about abilities, bonuses, ability damage, level drain (which I really like they way they worked!), curses, poisons, and various special abilities that PCs, NPCs and monsters may have. Lastly, the book closed with the conditions appendix. I like the fact that this came last in the book. It’s so hard to remember which affliction does what, and having them in an easy-to-find location in the book is the best thing ever.

Index

A 4 page index closed out the book, and that’s a decent-sized index for a book of this weight. While scanning through the index, I found most every topic you could think of to look up. This is a good thing. It’s still no match for the quality of the indices that Steve Jackson puts in their GURPS books, but I think that’s because GURPS is a far more complex system and needs the support of a good index.

This closes out my review of Pathfinder. As the game that I’ll be in starts up over the next month or two, I’ll let you know how the system works in play. Thanks for listening… er… reading.

The six of us (5 players and 1 GM) got together Saturday night to create Pathfinder characters for the newly starting campaign. Usually, when we start a new game everyone comes to the table with an idea of what they want to play. In this case, only one player had a solid concept and the rest of us sat around the table staring at each other with blank looks. It took a while of leafing through the books, character traits PDF and player’s guide PDF before things started to gel.

I was trying to sit back and decide last because I wanted to create a character that would merge well with the rest of the group. I didn’t do that in the Rifts game, and it caused tons of contention between Eric and me. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that option on Saturday. I had to help get the ball rolling. Kelly was waffling between playing a rogue or a paladin. I think she was hooking more into the paladin idea, but didn’t want to create a character that would be at odds with the rest of the group. At this point, the GM said that not all paladins have to be lawful good, but can match whatever alignment of another god if the player chose to do that. This freed up Kelly to lean stronger towards a paladin.

What finally tipped the balance was the fact that I told her that if she played a paladin, I would play a cleric of the same god. We settled on Abadar, the god of cities, wealth, merchants and law. We decided to focus on the wealth part since both of our characters were from wealthy families. Nat, at this point, picked up rogue as her class and decided to, I think, worship Abadar as well since she feels that he will help guide her character to the greatest wealth.

Once I chose cleric, Rhonda decided to dive into her ranger class choice now that she knew we had a healer. I think she wanted to play a front-line fighter all along, but was afraid of the lack of healing that would be coming her way.

In the end we ended up with:

• Bill – The Gamemaster
• Eric – Wizard (Conjurer specialty)
• Rhonda – Ranger (Bow specialist)
• Kelly – Paladin of Abadar
• Nat – Rogue
• Me – Cleric of Abadar

I don’t have a full character background written up just yet, but I’m working on it. I tend to do this with most of my characters. It helps me know them better. However, one thing I’m going to latch onto is the 1st edition AD&D cavalier ideal of having the best armor at all times. This doesn’t mean the best AC, but the best looking. That means that I’ll choose mundane full plate  over half plate +4 because full plate just looks that much better.

As the game progresses, I’ll be giving a report of how things go. I probably won’t be doing a full campaign log, but my impressions of the game flow and how well the system works (or doesn’t).

As far as the quality of character creation goes in the Pathfinder system, I really like it. It’s quite simple and flows very well. Of course, I’m an experienced gamer, so this is usually true of most systems. However, I was reading the book from the eye of someone that had never played before, and I’m still impressed by the clarity of the rules and how well written everything is. This is definitely a game that could be tossed into the hands of a total newbie and they would be able to pick it up quickly if they had half a brain to work with.

Pathfinder Core

In my last review of Pathfinder, I covered chapters 1-8. This time, I’m just going to cover 9-11 because that is the last sections of the player portion of the book. Before I continue, though, I did want to point out something that I missed in my last review: the physical qualities of the book. The book is well bound with very high quality, thick paper. The printing is excellent and easy on the eyes, with a few rare exceptions. The fancy borders they put on all of the pages sometimes bleed into paragraphs, especially on the left-hand edge of the left-hand paper, which can make some words harder to discern. The usual “soda proof” glossy protection on the covers is also in place, which I’m very happy for. This glossy coating has saved a ton of my books in the past when an ill-timed mouthful of soda explosively merges with a well-timed hilarious joke or quip. You know what I’m talking about, right?

Now on to the rest of the player portion of the book.

Chapter 9 covered the basics of spell casting and the rules around how spells work. Again, the folks at Paizo did a wonderful job in clarifying rules, using images to depict exactly how spells work and making the whole process make more sense. I’ve been a role player for 26 years now, and these rules are some of the cleanest, easiest to read and most concise pieces of text I’ve ever read in an RPG. I think even the more junior members of my role playing group (and those adverse to reading the rules) will have a good time with this book.

Chapter 10 covered the spells. Did I read each and every spell description? No! There are 132 pages of spells! What I did, however, was to “spot check” the spell list. I started with the lists of spells at the beginning of the chapter. They are well put together and easy to read. The only problem I have with the list is the wizard/sorcerer spell lists are broken down by school before they alphabetized under each level. This makes quickly figuring out the level of a spell or skimming the spell list more difficult for people that are not used to how spells are broken down by school. I didn’t stumble through it much, but a total beginner will have a hard time knowing which school to look under for the spell he is trying to find.

For the several dozen spells (or so) that I read, the writing was well done and easy to understand. I came away from each spell listing with no questions about “What if?”, although I’m sure my group (and others) will come up with some that my brain is not. My only complaint about the detailed spell listings is the fact they chose to use a black background with off-white text for the spell name. While the black background clearly delineates one spell listing from the next, which is a good thing, it makes reading the text a little hard when you’re in a hurry. I don’t know of many people who casually read spell listings (though, I’m sure you’re out there.) Most of the time, a spell is being looked up in the heat of battle by both the player(s) and the GM at the same time in order to better remember how the spell works or to clarify some point. This means hasty skimming of the spell listings in search of a spell. The layout format Paizo chose for the spell titles inhibits this exercise just a slight bit. I know I’m being nit-picky, but when a product is as good as Pathfinder, you have to find something to gripe about, right?

Chapter 11 covered the prestige classes of the core Pathfinder system. These I did read thoroughly, and I am very impressed with the balance of the classes as a whole. Most of them are taken directly from 3.5 with some possible tweaks here and there with the exception of the Pathfinder Chronicler. This is an obvious addition to the list, and I feel it may be a bit overpowered as compared to the other prestige classes. Maybe this is just my first impression, and I could be wrong about that. The only way to know for sure is to talk someone into playing one of them. Heck, that someone might just be me. It all depends on what the rest of my group decides to do tomorrow night when it comes time to create characters.

This concludes the review of the player portion of the Pathfinder Core book. I’ll cover the GM portion of the book in its entirety early next week.

Pathfinder Core

I just finished off my lunch hour reading chapters one through eight of the new Pathfinder Core book. This part of the book took me through character creation, races, classes, skills, feats, equipment, basic rules, combat rules and the miscellaneous bits of rules that are required for any RPG. I must say that I am quite impressed so far. The wide selection of powers, abilities, feats, skills and combat maneuvers is grand. My group is about to start a Pathfinder game, so I haven’t played any of the rules just yet, but they appear to be balanced and well written.

Paizo’s goal was to take D&D 3.5 and clean it up. They did an admirable job of doing so, and I can’t wait to see the game in action. The many things that D&D 3.5 did almost right has been nailed down and spit polished by the Paizo crew. While reading the rules, I could see how they would play out on the battle board quite well. They were easy to read, easy to understand and appear to be easy to implement in the game without slowing things down. Sure, we’re going to have to look up Bull Rush the first time someone does that action, but it will only slow the game down slightly as the rules explain how the maneuver works in clear and concise text.

I’m not sure, as of yet, which race/class/feat/skill combination I’m going to play. I’m leaning towards a rogue/wizard multiclass character. However, this time around, I’m going to let everyone else choose their character setups and then I’ll “fill in the blanks” of the party. Once we get rolling with the game, I’ll let you know which route I go and how it works out.

So far, I think my favorite part of the book is the feats section. I can see the progression of the feats as they build on one another, and each one brings something unique and powerful to the game. There are so many options, I can see three fighters being in one party, and none of them having the same abilities if the players choose to build their characters properly.

Good job, Paizo! Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to see the Bestiary when it hits the shelves.

As I make my way through the rest of the book, I’ll let you know what I think. Expect part 2 of this review in a day or three.

This is the final installment of this year’s Free RPG Day reviews. I saved the last one for Khyber’s Harvest by Wizards of the Coast.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Khyber's Harvest Cover

This book is a quick-and-dirty D&D adventure set in the Eberron world. The adventure is for second level characters, and five sample characters are provided in the back of the book.

I’m not going to plot out the adventure here and spoil it for all of you players. I am going to say that I love the detailed work WotC put into the adventure, and I’m still totally in love with the new style of stats for monsters, adversaries, traps and other such obstacles. However, I’m still not a huge fan of social skill challenges. If it’s a mechanical, arcane or some other physical challenge that the players can’t get up and safely reenact, then I’m all for dice rolls. However, for things that involve the characters talking, then the players can talk their way through it. Using skill challenges to replace role playing opportunities just seems horribly wrong to me. If I were to run this adventure, the diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, etc. style checks would be thrown out and replaced with true-to-form role playing, not dice-invoked roll playing… but that’s just me.

The adventure came with a card stock, double-sided piece that contained nicely done maps of two of the rooms. However, I would have preferred WotC to save their money on the card stock and spend it on higher quality printing of the GM’s maps. The two maps on the inside covers of the adventure are lacking in detail, hard to read and are missing the ever-so-vital (especially in 4th edition) grid markings. I did notice faint hash marks in place of grid lines, but that induces so much eye strain, it’s not worth it. Despite the poor print quality of the maps, they are well done and match the flavor text very well. It’s always frustrating when a module or adventure doesn’t get the text to match the maps. That’s not the case with Khyber’s Harvest.

Grade: B+ — Give me better maps, and it’s an easy A. Wizards of the Coast just barely missed the cut in getting an A for their freebie.

Castles and Crusades… Ahh… A classic. Yeah. I know it’s only been around for about five years, but the voice, feel, senses and concepts in the game take me back to my original AD&D days. If there are any gamers out there who think that 3.0 is “old school”, I highly suggest they check out Castles and Crusades from Troll Lord Games.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Castles & Crusades Cover

The book starts in with the usual attribute, race and class sections that can be found in games of this style. When I was reading these sections, it really reminded me of 1st edition AD&D. It’s almost like the Troll Lord Games desginers were channeling Gygax and Arneson when writing these passages. Yes, I know that there are some gamers out there who snub their noses at the classic style of gaming, but I really enjoyed this book.

Once the basics of the system were explained, there was a small section on magic and how it works. Again, more classic feel goodness here. Then came the description of combat flow and how various mechanics of the game go. There were a few confusion points that I hit, but I’m sure they are clearly explained in the full book where more time and space can be dedicated to the various aspects of the game.

The second half of the book was dedicated to The Wizard’s Tower adventure. Again, the look and feel of these pages took me back decades in time. Good stuff. My only real complaints about the adventure are that the maps could have been done in a more clear manner, and the “bad guy acting like a victim” was very cliche and obvious even to the most novice of gamers. If I were to run this adventure, I’d tweak things a bit more to “hide” the bad guy a little better.

Grade: A+ — All in all, a great introduction to the system, a good adventure and excellent work on the feel of the game. I would suggest this to my current group, but the response would be, “Why don’t we just play 1st edition?” and at that point, we’d pull out the yellow-spined books and have at it.

The Rogue Trader book from Fantasy Flight Games is a great introduction to the game system. It starts with the sample characters (which is kind of odd) and continues on to explain the characters, combat, skill check rules and general game system. I was quite impressed with the thorough treatment of the rules in such a short span of time.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Rogue Trader Cover

The latter half of the book was filled with a great mini-adventure that was entirely non-linear. The players actually have choices in the flow of the game. I really enjoyed reading the book and the adventure. I think I would also enjoy the game system as well. It seems to be a good mix of technology and mysticism. I doubt I could get my current group to play the game, though. It’s just too dark for their tastes.

Grade: A — Great descriptions of the system, characters, combat flow and the adventure made for a top-notch introduction to the Warhammer 40k RPG system.

Today’s review is of Paizo’s Bonus Bestiary for their Pathfinder system. If you don’t know what Pathfinder is, I strongly suggest you go check it out. It’s well worth your time. I can’t wait for the full system to be released.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Pathfinder Cover

The Bonus Bestiary just wet my appetite even more for the release of Pathfinder. I’ve downloaded the beta, and the quality of the game is top-notch. The Paizo crew really know their stuff. Heck, they did Dragon and Dungeon magazines for years. They should know what they are doing with role playing games.

Back to the Bonus Bestiary…. There are 13 different monsters in full detail with excellent illustrations (except for the Faerie Dragon, which is very cartoonish). The production value of this book is very high, and I didn’t find a single thing I would change about the text or stats provided for the monsters. This is what I’m looking for in an RPG book. Something I can buy, skim/read and put to use in the next session without too much work or effort. I’m a busy guy and I don’t have time to ponder over things too heavily and munge with published stats that should otherwise be usable.

Grade: A+ — Paizo obviously knows the 3.0/3.5 system very well and has made it even better with their Pathfinder efforts. Good job, guys!

Today’s review is of Hearts of Chaos, also by Goodman Games. Hearts of Chaos is an Amethyst adventure.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Hearts of Chaos Cover

The Amethyst system uses the core 4e rules and expands on them to allow for a modern-ish setting. Why modern”-ish”? This is because the world of magic, fae, dragons and creatures of the imagination have invaded the modern world. The characters can be pulled from traditional fantasy or the modern “techan” realm. I really like this idea as it reminds of one of my favorite RPGs of all time: Rifts.

Goodman Games does an excellent job of setting the scene within a short period of time before getting to the adventure. The rules additions are clearly explained, and the setting is well done. Once the adventure portion of the book starts, the quality really steps up a notch.

The traditional overview of the adventure is given along with a brief description of each of the encounters. Then the details roll in and the writing is very well done and very streamlined. The module is even well balanced and very playable, which is the opposite of the other half of the physical book, Immortal Heroes. I applaud Goodman Games for a job well done.

I really like the adventure, and I may run it for my group as a one-off game while our GM for the current Rifts game is out of town on a motorcycle trip with his biker buddies.

The only downside is that five pre-generated characters for the adventure are only available online. They are not provided in print format. This was a fact that I overlooked the first read-through, and when the book ended, I was left wondering where the promised sample characters were at. After a quick skim of the text, I focused in on the words “available online” and went seeking the characters. If you are in the same boat I was in, then here is the easy link for you to download the characters.

Grade: A+ — After reading Immortal Heroes first, I didn’t have high hopes for the game balance capabilities of Goodman Games, but they have totally redeemed themselves in this half of the book. I’m quite impressed with the writing, balance, feel and flow of the game. If I didn’t already have a bajillion dollars invested in Rifts books, I might run out and pick this one up ASAP. As it stands for me, personally, I’ll wait until I have the spare cash for the book, and then pick it up. Good job, Goodman Games!