Ravenous Role Playing

Another fine Free RPG Day submission from the folks at Exile Game Studio. They did a great job last year, and I believe the year before was a good submission.

The rule explanations on the first three pages were just right for running the adventure as a stand-alone book. No other purchases and requirements (other than dice and people to play with) exist. It may seem like three pages couldn’t possibly cover a complete role playing system with any adequacy, but it does. Trust me.

Following the rules run-down, there’s a well written adventure that consumes seven pages of the book. The adventure’s storyline starts off strong and then opens up into a miniature sandbox in which the players can do whatever they want. There are some very obvious choices about what the PCs should do, and the book covers all of those aspects. If the players really run amok in Hollow Earth, then GM will have to flex his creativity and roll with the punches.

The last six pages of the book contain three characters that can be used to play in the adventure. I wish there had been at least one more pregenerated character, but three should suffice. A good GM with more than three players (and without the main Hollow Earth book(s)) should be able to create some new characters based off of what he sees in the examples.

Grade: A+ / A strong explanation of rules combined with three characters being run through a well-written adventure that can be completed in a night make for a fantastic submission by Exile Game Studio.

This 14 page book (the last two pages are advertisements, so I don’t count them) provides for a sandbox style adventure setting based on the new “Shadowfell” game environment for 4e D&D. After reading through the 14 pages, I’m reminded of how the 2e AD&D Ravenloft setting was broken down into different domains with masters running those domains. This has a similar flavor, but without the truly dark stylings and ominous overtones of Ravenloft. If I were going to throw my players into a dark and dreadful arena of despair, hatred and hopelessness, I’d go with Ravenloft for sure.

Two pages give the reader the history of the domain and how it came to be like it is. Following this is half a page of how the land looks today as opposed to its more peaceful and glorious times.

Three pages of inhabitants and their statistics follow this. I’ll admit that I’ve never been a fan of 4e D&D. I have the core books (and then some) and I’ve played in a couple of campaigns (which will be my last with this system.) When looking at the stat blocks of the creatures and NPCs, I’m amazed at how powerful the “low level” stuff really is. It seems to me that something with a mere 8 levels would have 89 HP without being a fighter of some type (this particular example is drawn from a druid NPC.)

The four and a half page (or so) detail different locations within the domain and give a hook to go with each one. The hooks are nice, but they don’t seem to be strong enough to really hook a good adventuring group into the story line that is unfolding around them.

The remainder of the book talks about events and how the NPCs act within those events. There really isn’t much to go with the PCs, so the GM really has to work hard to hook in the PCs to get them to become part of the story.

That rounds out the book. Can you guys and gals see what’s missing? Rules. Pre-generated characters. Spells. Powers.

This is not playable as a stand-alone book. You have to have at least the three core books and probably the new Shadowfell box set to go with it.

Grade: C- / Not enough content here to be usable without a $100+ dollar layout. Not a good freebie. It doesn’t entice me to pick up any of the 4e D&D stuff that I don’t already have. It also doesn’t make me want to dust off the 4e D&D books that I have and put them to use.

Today’s review covers Broken Chains, which is a taster adventure for the Black Crusade campaign game by Games Workshop. Like much of what GW does, the adventure is set in their vast Warhammer 40k world of the Imperium, Chaos, Eldar, Tyranids and such. This particular adventure focuses on the efforts of the Imperium vs. Chaos with the players taking the role of Heretics. At first glance, this seems like the PCs are “evil” and “against the law” and such. This makes for a very hard time of creating a cohesive group because it always devolves into who is making more money and who is trying to backstab whom. It’s rarely a good thing (from my personal experience) to have a group of “evil” characters.

However, the premise behind this adventure is that the characters made some hard choices and ended up on the side of Chaos. Thus, they were captured, imprisoned on a ship and headed to summary interrogation and execution. This is where things go sideways for the ship and 200 years later the PCs awake from stasis aboard the Inquisition’s prison ship. Great premise and it works well for the one shot adventure. The end of the adventure leaves things open for further actions by the characters if the group chooses to continue, but I just don’t see the game being sustainable over the long run because of the fact that the PCs are “bad guys.” Just my opinion, though.

The book itself is made up of four pages of pre-generated characters complete with backstory. The inclusion of the backstory is a great thing. It really helps set the scene and allows the players to latch on to the characters that are handed to them.

The next eight pages are the rules summary. Like the past few years of freebies from Games Workshop, they do a great job of summarizing a fairly complex game system into a mere eight pages. It’s usable. It’s understandable. It’s extensible. All good things in a rules summary. There are a few places where I thought the rules were “light” in description or options, but they do mention that more things are available in the full-sized version of the game. This made me happy.

Five more pages are dedicated to detailing (but not mapping!) the Chains of Judgment, which is the ship that the adventure takes place on. I really, really, really wish a map had been included with the descriptions. It took me several passes of reading to fully grasp the layout and key places of the ship and how they relate to each other. I’m not expecting full on battle map locations in a Free RPG Day submission, but a half page of maps of how the different decks relate to one another would be nice for the GM to have.

Following the detail of the ship, eight pages detail the flow of the adventure. Everything from waking up from stasis through the various combats and encounters and on to the final battle are detailed. The flow is very well thought out, very well detailed and a great read. It all makes sense, even without the missing maps that I mentioned above. One thing that surprised me (for an RPG based on a tabletop battle game) is that not all encounters have to be resolved via fighting. This was a pleasant and refreshing twist on the encounters. As a matter of fact, two of the three key encounters can be resolved without a single shot being fired. Very good stuff.

Lastly, the book rounds out with three pages of creature/monster/NPC stats. If I were more comfortable with the system, the stats blocks would make plenty of sense to me. As it stands, I had to study the stat blocks to make sure I really got what they were telling me. This is more of a lack of experience with the game on my part than any shortfalling of the book.

Grade: A- / The grade would have been higher had there been a map or three to help the GM out. Even though the grade is high, I’m not enticed to buy the game. I haven’t looked at the price of it, but Games Workshop always seems to overcharge for their books. I doubt I could pick up the book and its supplements and not break the bank.

When I first cracked the cover of this book, the first thing I read was the fact that this RPG is based off of a computer/console game by the same name. I knew I had recognized the name before, but didn’t put two and two together until I hit those words. This made me very leery of the quality of this work. Most of the time, a derivative work is not as good as the original. Books turned into movies generally suck. Movies turned into movies almost always suck. Computer games turning into RPGs? Well. Maybe it’ll work.

In this case, it worked, and worked well.

This freebie was a fantastic product for hooking someone into the game. Everything the group needs to run the adventure is provided within the covers of the book. Rules, spells, pregenerated characters, adventures, monsters, bad guys, good guys, world flavor and a rockin’ map are all packed within the 32 pages of the book.

The Quickstart Guide opens up with a beautiful full-color map of Ferelden on the inside cover and credits on the opposing page. Then they quickly jump into what you’ll need to game with, what role playing is (been a long time since I’ve seen a section like that) and what the character sheet is all about. Following this page are two more that detail the remainder of the character stats and a pared down equipment list. In the middle is a one-pager (with permission to photocopy) about the Kingdom of Ferelden and what it’s all about. The fact that they included details about the world that Dragon Age is set in was a fantastic addition.

Then came five pages about the system, combat, stunts, actions and the like to give everyone a chance to learn the basics of the system. I really like the idea of having “Dragon Die” that affects how things come out, but it’s still included in the base roll. This really helps speed things up quite a bit, especially during combat. It’s a brilliant idea that I wish I had thought of first!

The largest section of the book is the 14 pages that composes the adventure that the GM will run the PCs through. It’s a well thought out adventure with combat, skill checks, intrigue, decision making and packed full of dark and wonderful role playing opportunities. If this is a taste of how the rest of the game is written, produced and edited, then I may put it on my wish list of things for my up coming birthday.

Lastly, are five pregenerated characters that give you all of the stats and details necessary to play the characters effectively.

Even though the insides of the book were black and white, I really like the layout, font, design and B&W artwork that was included. I’m hoping that the main book is full color inside because of the incredible artwork of the creatures that were provided in the Free RPG Day book.

Grade: A+ / Strong writing, mixed with a good system, mixed with an intriguing world all make for a great RPG system. If the price is right (I haven’t checked yet,) I’ll be picking this up at my FLGS.

I ran through the Tunnels & Trolls Free RPG Day submission while out at lunch. I got so engrossed in the solitaire adventure that I lost track of time and almost ran over the time allotted for my break.

The opening of the book starts with five pages (out of 14) on how to create a character and how the rules apply to the character once it’s created. While it’s not the full T&T rule set or all of the options on how to make a character, I could comfortably run the scenario included in the booklet with nothing more to go on. That’s high quality and incredibly compact writing for a freebie.

The next five pages was a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of writing (broken down over the course of 40 paragraphs as options) in which different choices and different results on the die rolls leading to the various outcomes. I ran through the solitaire adventure three times and found myself dying each time. No. The game system isn’t that harsh, nor is the adventure. I just had a string of bad die rolls and a poor choice on my part. Such is the gaming life.

The rest of the book (4 pages) outlines a series of encounters across an “adventure” that are designed to show off the combat system and bartering system within T&T. It does a very good job at allowing a fresh T&T GM to experience his/her side of things and for the players to become comfortable with the system.

My only complaint about the book is that it won’t last. It was printed with a laser printer on glossy paper. From past experience, these types of things don’t last. With a little heat, pressure and humidity, the fused toner on the paper will detach and then adhere to the opposing pages. Next time the book is opened the toner will “tear loose” and trash the print on the paper. That’s OK. This is not something I purchased and not something that I’ll sell on eBay 20 years from now for huge sums of money. It only needs to last me long enough to write this review and maybe run a friend or three through the adventure.

Grade: A / This is a well-written book, but it still doesn’t entice me to play the game. This is not the fault of the freebie, but of the core mechanics. The numbers involved with T&T can grow to become quite large and there’s lots of math involved with each round of combat. From personal experience, this either leads to lots of calculator use, lots of slow down or lots of errors in the results.

Here’s the first review of Free RPG Day 2011 items. I’m not planning on doing them in any particular order. I’m just grabbing a book off the top of the pile and diving into the reading and reviewing.

The first review is of Paizo’s Pathfinder module entitled, “We Be Goblins!”

This module is a mix of Paranoia-style humor and fantasy role playing at its best. It pulls the players out of their comfort zones of being the standard fantasy fare heroes and turns them into potential champions of a small goblin tribe in the Brinestump Marsh just outside Sandpoint. With even a halfway decent GM, this short adventure (I’m guess that the run time would be 2-4 hours depending on how quickly combats are resolved) should be a hilarious endeavor.

The artwork is well done, but the map could have been a little more clear on how to gain access from one level of the shipwreck to another. Like most Free RPG Day stuff, the adventure is pretty linear, but enough of the immediate area is described to allow for a little sandboxing to occur.

The thing I like best about this module is the four pregenerated characters. They’re well done with great descriptions and funny little songs that go with them.

The thing I like least about this module is that I cannot pick it up and run it by its lonesome. If I were to be handed this book, I’d also need the Pathfinder Core book and the Pathfinder Bestiary to complete the adventure. Sure, I could “wing it,” but to run the module properly, I need the supporting material. Many other Free RPG Day books at least give us enough to go on for rules and character stats and such to allow the book to stand alone. Of course, I said this about last year’s Paizo efforts. I guess they’re not listening to me. Honestly, if they had included the full stat block of each creature in the module, then this complaint would vanish.

Grade: A- / The module is hilarious, well written and engaging. The monster stat blocks missing drops the grade a bit.

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.)