Ravenous Role Playing

Today’s review is the front half (or is it the back half?) of the duo-flip-reversed-book. This side is the Immortal Heroes which is part of Goodman Games’s Hero’s Handbook line of work.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Immortal Heroes Cover

The book held fourteen pages of very well written, well thought out and nicely put together content. It covered nine different end-goals or pathways a character could take to infamy or fame. I loved the ideas put forth in the book (the Archfiend would have been perfect for a recent cleric I played), and my favorite had to be the Radiant Master (which I guess is the total opposite of the Archfiend.) Goodman Games needs to put out more content like this, but before they do so, they need to review the current power levels of the abilities put forth in the PHB and PHB2.

The powers and abilities presented in the book are overpowered and will grossly unbalance a game. I’ve never gotten to the levels necessary to wield these powers in 4e D&D, so when my first impression of, “Wow. That’s powerful” struck me, I turned to my handy library of books and did some research. The powers presented in Immortal Heroes are easily twice as powerful as equivalent powers outlined in the PHB and PHB2. This book very much reminded me of the old 3e D&D AEG books that were wildly popular with my power-gaming friends.

If I were a player, I’d beg to be allowed to use something from this book. Seeing as how I’m the GM most of the time, I’m putting this book out of sight where my players will never discover it.

Grade: B — The ideas were well put together and thought out, but I have issues with 3rd party publishers throwing the game balance out of whack on a whim.

Sorry for the slackness in the The Free RPG Day reviews lately. Life has caught up to me, and I’ve been incredibly busy lately. I hope to finish off the Free RPG Day reviews in the next two to three weeks.

Today, I’m reviewing the Hollow Earth submission to the Free RPG Day. It is brought to us by Exile Game Studio.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Hollow Earth Cover

The book started with a three page overview of the basic rules. The overview was done quite well, and would allow even a novice role player to dive into the game system and have some fun. The next five pages are dedicated to the adventure, which is very linear and wonderfully put together. I’m normally not a fan of linear plots in adventures, but this is just a sixteen page taster, so it’s acceptable. It’s hard to build a sandbox game in such a short time frame. The main reason I like the adventure is that there is a great mix of skill checks and combat challenges. There are even times when skills are used during the middle of combat. This allows the GM and the players to get a taste of what the system is really like.

The last eight pages are double-sided character sheets that are provided for the adventure in the book. The characters are well done, well balanced and make a good party to travel together.

Grade: A — This book has enticed me enough to put Hollow Earth on my list of items to investigate about running. I love the basic system, and I’d like to see their more advanced rules. If you’re interested in finding Hollow Earth (which I recommend, based on the free book) then you can find it at RPGNow or DriveThruRPG.

Before I start this review, I wanted to admit up front that I did not read the entire book. Once I got past the first scene in the adventure, I stopped. This is because I want to play in this adventure, and I don’t want it spoiled for me by reading the adventure portion of the book. Having said that, here is the review of the material I did read.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Geist Cover

This is a review of the Free RPG Day book entitled ‘Geist’ by White Wolf Game Studio. Geist is a game for the recently nearly dead. What’s that mean? Basically, the characters are people that, through some misfortune or malfortune, found themselves dead. Then a Geist stepped in to bring them back to life to finish business that needed closure. This awakening through death gives the character special powers, which makes them supernatural and superhuman people.

After a wonderfully written one page introduction to the game environment and setup the book jumped right into the basic rules of the game. It’s standard White Wolf fare (which is great in its simplicity) with some unique twists specific to this game. This is how all of their games are, and I’m glad they have found, and stuck with, a successful formula for a gaming system. Following this section is six pages about the game specific abilities, setups, powers, and miscellaneous information for playing a character in Geist. As always, the prose used to describe the specialities of the game is top-notch. White Wolf has always been the master of “fluff” without sacrificing too much “crunch” in the process.

Pages 10 through 36 (out of 48) detail the sample adventure. I read the background, setup, environment, and misc. details of the adventure before jumping into the first scene. I read the first scene, and stopped there before jumping to the characters in the back of the book. The information is presented in a clear and concise manner with plenty of advice for new Storytellers. Not only does this book introduce a player to the concepts of Geist, it could easily be used as an introductory book to role playing in general, both for the players and the GMs… er… Storytellers. This is the primary reason I stopped reading the adventure. I want to hand this book to one of my players and see if I can convince them to run a game instead of just playing.

The last several pages of the book are about the characters. The details provided here go far beyond a simple stat block. There are full details about the character’s abilities and powers and how they are played. Beyond just the game mechanics, the book provides for detailed backgrounds, descriptions, role playing hints and some game items such as Virtue, Vice and Archetype. I love the character build outs in the book, and I only wish more characters were created with this level of detail in my games. It’s good stuff. Plain and simple.

Grade: A. The book was well put together (I would expect nothing less from White Wolf), clear, thorough and made me want to come back for more. If I can convince my group to play in the game (or one of my players to run the game) and it goes well for our group, I might invest in the books for this RPG. The Free RPG Day book did it’s job. It setup a lead for a possible sale.

Like yesterday, I finished off a booklet while at lunch. This time it is Dragon Warriors by Magnum Opus Press. The booklet took me through the basics of character creation, but only detailed two of the seven possible professions. The two they detailed were Knight and Barbarian, which are very similar. I wished they had provided me with Knight and Warlock or Knight and Sorcerer, just to get a bit of flavor of how the magic system worked. There was no mention of the magic rules other than to say they were in the main book. I needed a taste of the magic system, but maybe it’s too complex to fit into a freebie booklet. I’m not sure.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Dragon Warriors Cover

After stepping through the relatively simple character creation process, the Knight and Barbarian classes were detailed, but none of the rules for using their skills were provided. It was all just the flavor text. This makes it very hard to play the introductory adventure that comes in the back of the book. I guess the creators expected everyone to just hack their way through all obstacles since the next portion of the book went through, in good detail, the combat system.

This brings me to my beef with the system. After you roll to hit (lower is better), then you have to roll to penetrate the armor of the target. Each weapon has a different die to try to pierce the difference defense ratings of the various armors. Too complex for me. I’d rather roll to hit and roll for damage. In this case, there is no damage roll. If you hit and get past the victim’s armor, you do a set amount of damage depending on the weapon. I don’t like this. This doesn’t allow for “glancing blows” or “precise strikes” or anything like that. All stabs with a long sword are identical. With this system even critical hits do the same amount of damage. All they give you is automatic piercing of the armor.

Follow this was five pages about the world. They did a great job with world creation, and I wouldn’t mind using their setting in a different system. Perhaps Magnum Opus Press could have dropped the world information (since it’s not really used in the introductory adventure) and replaced it with some information about the magic system. This would have given a greater flavor for the game, I think.

Then two pages were dedicated to three monsters (one without a stat block) that were not used in the adventure. I’m not sure why they were in the booklet other than to just fill some space. It didn’t grab me as something that should be in there.

Lastly, the booklet ended with a two page adventure that is very linear, but this is OK for an introduction to the game. It’s hard to do a “sandbox game” in a mere 24 pages while still explaining the rules and regulations of the game system.

All-in-all, this freebie did not do its job. I’m supposed to be wowed by the content to such a degree that I want to run out and buy the full version (and a few supplements) and run the game right away. Instead, this booklet will go on one of my many bookshelves and will probably stay there for years until I accidentally stumble across it and wonder why I still have it.

Grade: C. I’m sorry to give such a low grade to any product, but this one is well deserved. Perhaps the full game system is much better. I don’t know. I won’t go find out, either. If they do another booklet for next year’s Free RPG Day, then maybe they’ll listen to me and forget trying to detail the world and give us more of the magic system. Some sample characters would be nice as well since the character generation rules were scarce in the booklet.

I managed to read the entire Corporation booklet over lunch today. It is a dystopic view of future Earth set in the year 2500 where corporations rule the world with an iron fist and the PCs are agents working for one (or more) corporations to accomplish the goals of the corporation. I love the concept as it is very cyberpunk-ish in nature, and that is my all-time favorite genre to read and game in. There are just so many possibilities out there when you introduce super advanced science with super degraded society.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Corporation Cover

The booklet started with an overview of the world and the five major corporations. Then there was a single page packed with details regarding the “other antagonists” of the world, which I really liked. Following this was two pages outlining the basic rules. I could tell the main system was more complex than the basics revealed in the book, but the core system presented is excellent, simple and elegant in its execution. Anyone could skim these two pages and jump right into the game. They did a top-notch job of giving just enough rules to run the game out of the booklet.

The center of the book contained four fully created and fleshed out characters complete with backgrounds and motivations.The latter half of the book was a short adventure through which to run the sample characters. The adventure is very linear in nature, but it was designed to show off the strengths of the system in and out of combat. I like it as an intro adventure, so a group could see if they wanted to move forward with purchasing the full game. The designers did an excellent job with setting things up to keep the game going well.

The last page contained a section of “Also in the core rules…” which really made me want to run out with what remained of my lunch hour and buy the game. I’ll probably wait a few weeks until after a conference I’m going to leaves me with a little spare cash, and I’ll see what I can do about adding this book to my cyberpunk collection (both fiction and RPG books.)

Grade: A. No ‘+’ on this one because I think the game system and weapons are a little too deadly. I think I’ll have to wait and see what the core rules present, and how long it takes to create characters. The character creation system was left out of the booklet (which is fine since they provided sample characters.) If it’s like Mythus and takes four hours to make a single character, then I’ll probably skip buying the book. If it only takes a few minutes to whip out a new character to replace the freshly dead meat, then it might be worth considering.

This 24 page booklet brought back some excellent memories of playing Paranoia with Buddy running the game. While the game system has changed a bit from what I remember it (though not much) the style, flavor and theme of the game has remained true to what the original creators envisioned 25 years ago. I laughed on every page, and laughed hard enough to almost hurt myself on most pages. This primer book really made me want to dust off my Paranoia collection and run a game or three. I’ll see what my gaming group has to say about that.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Paranoia Cover

The booklet consisted of 7 pages of player material which covered the basics of the environment and what to expect on a character sheet. Most of this material was game world information as seen from the players’ eyes. It also includes a sample character, which is well laid out and easy to make sense of despite the small page size.

The remainder of the book is for Ultraviolet clearance only (e.g.: The GM for you non-Paranoia citizens.)

The next three pages cover the history of Alpha Complex, the current state of affairs in Alpha Complex, Service Groups, Mutations and Secret Societies. All things the game is built on. After this, the book delves into the very simple rules of the game. This is one thing I like about this system. It’s simple, straight-forward and does not get in the way of the role playing involved with the game. I wish more game systems were like this one.

The rest of the book contains Tube Jam which is a well thought out and great introductory mission for new GM’s to the Paranoia system. It covers almost every aspect of the game from briefing to debriefing and all of the fun that ensues between the two. There are even some great R&D items in the booklet that had me crying with laughter.

The book ended with five troubleshooters (characters for you non-Paranoia citizens) that can be used in the mini adventure published in the book.

All told, the booklet is a great introduction to the game, and if I didn’t already own the classic Paranoia, I’d run out and buy the most recent incarnation. I just love the classic version too much to see myself shelling out what few bucks I have on the new stuff. Someday, I may do just that, but not anytime soon. Maybe I’ll talk my group into letting run a night or three of class Paranoia and see how it floats.

Grade: A+. It contains everything needed to run the game, and is a great enticement for players to run out and spend money on the full version.

Instead of starting with a book to review, I decided to grab the lone CD to see what it held for me. The CD contained a piece of Windows software by the name of Hero Lab by Lone Wolf Development. The software was a demo version of Hero Lab which would not allow me to save/print, but that’s OK. It gave me a taste of the software. It also came with a handful of systems, and I toyed around with all of them. The systems it came with were Cortex (which was broken), d20, Mutants and Masterminds, Savages Worlds, and Vampire: The Requiem. I was familiar with most of the systems, so using the software was very easy.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Hero Lab CD

The interface for the software was top-notch and flowed quite well. The conflict resolver was very well written, and it guided me through making a handful of characters, even if I couldn’t do anything with them.

Did the demo entice me to run out and spend $30 on the software? Nope. I suppose if I liked making characters electronically, I would go for it. However, I’m a very old school character creator. Give me a handful of dice (unless it’s a point-buy system), a sheet of paper (or maybe a good character sheet), and a pencil (with a good eraser). That’s all I need for creating characters. The only exception I make to this is the Hero Builder for Hero Systems. It just streamlines everything so well, I can’t help but use their creator for new characters, especially when I’m running the game and have to come up with bad guys on the fly.

The main downside to the software is that each system must be purchased separately. If you play in three different game systems and want to use this software for all of them, you’re looking at a total layout of $70. It’s $30 for the software and a system. Then it’s $20 per system after that. With a pricing structure like that, things can get pretty steep pretty fast.

Grade: A-  (The ‘-’ part of the grade reflects my personal preference towards pencil/paper character creation.)