I am currently in a card game obsession phase. Absolutely in love with a lot of well designed card games. My two current favorites are Netrunner and Sentinels of the Multiverse. Of the two I feel there is a small preference for Sentinels because of the fact that it can be played with more than two-players, and it is even more fun and engaging with the increased player count. So lets dive in and examine this absolutely wonderful game, the greatest cooperative, fixed deck, comic book themed game in the multiverse.
The game takes place in a series of turns, each one has three distinct components: The Villain Turn, the Hero Turns, and the Environment Turn. Each of these distinct types of turns can be further broken down in a few stages. Each one has a specific "Start of.." and "End of.." turn phase, that really only matters for triggering various effects and abilities. The Villain Turn also involves drawing and playing a card from the Villain deck. You will also most likely be dealing with Villain specific powers that relate to either the beginning or end of the Villain Turn. This type of triggered ability seems to be common across all the Villains in one form or another.
After you've resolved the Villain Turn you then proceed to the Hero Turns. These also each have the "Start" and "End" phases, as well as the following in order sequence: Play a Card, Use a Power, Draw a Card. This can be a simple and straight forward sequence of events, or a complex interplay of abilities and triggers depending on the hero.
The third turn, the Environment Turn, is quite similar to the Villain Turn. You trigger and "Start" and abilities, then draw and play an Environment card, then trigger any "End" abilities. After that you head back to the beginning and do it all over again. This repeats until you've either lost, by all the heroes being incapacitated, or you've won, by reducing the villain's hit points to 0 or less. The basic rules and framework of the whole thing are quite simple and elegant. All the complexity comes from the variety of cards and abilities associated with each of the heroes, villains, and environments.
The variety of all of these different decks is perhaps my favorite element of this game. When you count the expansions and the couple of promo decks you have 15 heroes, 13 villains, and 8 environments. While all of them operate similarly enough to not require any extra learning curve when switching between them; they also all feel very distinct and flavorful. You have heroes that are just plain damage dealers, heroes that build up to complicated combos, and heroes that help other heroes shine. You have villains ranging from criminal masterminds with armies of underbosses and thugs, to deadly mercenaries with impressive arsenals of devices and weapons. The environments range from the Ruins of Atlantis to a Mars Base. Each one is fun and interesting in its own right, which is quite impressive.
So far I have played in I believe 6 games of Sentinels, with two of those being solo play throughs to just test out new decks. The game does not have formal single player rules, so I was basically playing the roles of two actual players, but it was still somewhat enjoyable. The game really shines in the teamwork and interaction with other players though. You really feel like a band of valiant superheroes, all working together to take on the big and bad evil villains that threaten the peace and safety of the world. The game definitely gets easier with more players, and the more the merrier is always true in the majority of board games IMO. But I can still see it being fun with 2 or 3.
Now let me see if I can remember the participants in each of the games I've played in.
Game 1: Me, John, Emily, and Armaghn. We faced the "easy" villain Baron Blade, a sort of mad scientist type. The heroes that we fielded were the Wraith (kind of a female Batman), Ra (Egyptian themed fire god), Expatriate (chick with lots of guns), and Fanatic (holy/angel themed hero). We won, but it was kinda tough.
Game 2: Same players. The bad guy this time was Akash'Bhuta (or Osh-Kosh Bagosh as we nicknamed him), a giant tree creature. Wraith and Ra were played again, but this time they were joined by Nightmist (spellcasting supernatural private eye chick) and Legacy (kind of a Superman type). We won again, this time a little easier.
Game 3: Me, John, Emily, Armaghn, and Gabe. We faced Grand Warlord Voss (Thanos/Darkseid type). We had Bunker (Iron Man-esque), Ardent Adept (hippie bard music powered type), Ra, Tachyon (combo between the Flash's powers and Reed Richards intellect), and Unity (Gadgeteer chick). Another tough battle but we won.
Game 4: Just me. I faced off against the Deadpool-like Ambuscade. I used Haka (maori warrior brute type) and Mr. Fixer (Luke Cage/Ninja). I barely won, and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have, I probably forgot to do quite a few things by not paying attention.
Game 5: Me again. I faced off against the giant evil robot Omnitron. I had Absolute Zero (kinda a tech using Iceman) and Tempest (Storm-like powers in an alien form). Stopped at about halfway through in order to start up a game with actual other people, but it wasn't looking great for me.
Game 6: Me, Emily, Armaghn, and Ron. We had to face the infectious Plague Rat. We fielded Haka, Legacy, Visionary (psychic hero), and Mr. Fixer. We won pretty handily.
As you can see, I'm not the only one who really enjoyed playing and was willing to do so multiple times. I'm definitely looking forward to more games, and I really think I could do an interesting spin off or two using similar ideas.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd Edition: A Review
So for the past few weeks at out weekly Magpie game we have been playing a little campaign of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd Edition. It has been a fun and interesting little endeavour.
For those that don't know about the game I will provide a bit of background. First off the world that it takes place in is a fairly standard fantasy, low-magic type setting at its core. It is one of the older worlds in this hobby and genre, and a lot of the tropes present in modern stuff can be seen in this. Here is a bit from the Warhammer Fantasy setting wiki:
"Warhammer Fantasy is a fantasy setting, created by Games Workshop, which is used by many of the company's games. Some of the best-known games set in this world are: the table top wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay pen-and-paper role-playing game, and the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Another game, Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, is a free-to-play release. Warhammer is notable for its "dark and gritty" background world, which features a culture similar in appearance to Early Modern Germany crossed with Tolkien's Middle-earth. "Chaos" is central to the setting, as the forces of Chaos are attempting unceasingly to tear the mortal world asunder. The world itself is populated with a variety of races such as humans, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, lizardmen, ogres, and other creatures familiar to many fantasy/role-playing settings."
The game itself uses one of my least favorite systems, a percentile based system. The system has you roll a pair of ten-sided dice that allow you to generate a range of numbers from 01-100. You have skills and abilities that also are rated on a range from 01 to 100. When you roll you are trying to get a result that is under the rating of the skill. So if you have a 50 Weapon Skill, then when you attack with a weapon you have to roll a 50 or less in order to hit. My main problem with this style of system is that the range you are having to deal with is so large, and in most iterations of the percentile system you never have anywhere near enough points to spend in order to make yourself reliably good at anything, or at most you can get reliably good at one thing but at the cost of being terrible at lots of other stuff. Another problem with them is that a lot of them make it very hard for you to raise a skill once you get good at it, which is somewhat realistic, but not in a way that I find enjoyable to simulate.
This particular game actually does a decent job of reducing these annoying tendencies. For one you have a small spread of attributes that all start at a fairly decent number (around 30-40) and the rating of the attribute translates into a rating for all the related skills. I.E. if you have a 45 Willpower, then all Willpower based skills will be at a 45. This is nice since you do not have to spend points on each individual skill. The method for raising skills is also much more reliable. Instead of having to roll for it and hope that you get lucky enough to raise it, you just spend XP points in order to raise them at a set rate. While this is still rather slow, it is set and regular, so that is nice.
The combat in the system has some really interesting stuff in it. Probably my favorite aspect of the game so far has been the critical hits tables. Well, really the whole damage system is pretty cool. First off you have an amount of Wounds (Hit Points). When you take damage it gets taken away from this pool of Wounds, with Armor reducing the amount from each hit. Once you are down to 0 or less wounds, each point of damage below 0 wounds translate into a point of critical damage. So if you knock someone down to -4 Wounds, then that is a 4 point critical. You roll percentile dice again on a critical table and cross reference the result with the critical rating. This gives you a number between 1-10. You then take that number and consult the specific hit location table and use the entry assigned to that number. The specific hit location is determined by reversing the digits on the dice that you rolled to hit btw. Here is an example to try and clarify all of that. Lets say you have a Weapon Skill 55. You roll the dice and get a 41. Hurrah you hit!. So take those numbers and reverse them to get 14, which gives you the hit location, with 14 I believe being the head. So that is a hit to the head. Let us assume that you have already removed all the Wounds from this target, so all damage is going to be counting towards that critical rating. Lets say you do 7 damage, so thats a +7 critical ratings. Then you roll percentile dice again. Lets say you get a 31 That means your result is an 10. You consult the Head Critical result table and you see this result: "Killed in whatever spectacular and gore-drenched fashion the player or the GM cares to describe." Huzzah! We are actually using an even more elaborate critical hits chart than the one in the book that was written by an actual M.D., so its very interesting and detailed.
The rest of the game is fairly straight forward. If you have any experience with things like D&D you will be familiar with how most of this stuff works on a basic level. Nothing too complicated.
As far as the story and campaign have been going, we are playing through a module in the back of the rulebook; and it has been pretty fun. Its a bit of a mystery investigation type of thing so far. The party is composed of a Human Thief, a Dwarven Troll Slayer, a Dwarven Shield Breaker, and a Human Initiate of Sigmar (my character). We have fled a huge enemy invasion, fought Beastmen, Skaven, Ghouls, and other beasties. We got a Relic of Sigmar, but after it was turned in it was stolen. We pursued it but have not been able to find it yet. We've helped out some blind priest, and delved into sewers one too many times. The play has been quite enjoyable. I look forward to even more sessions.
For those that don't know about the game I will provide a bit of background. First off the world that it takes place in is a fairly standard fantasy, low-magic type setting at its core. It is one of the older worlds in this hobby and genre, and a lot of the tropes present in modern stuff can be seen in this. Here is a bit from the Warhammer Fantasy setting wiki:
"Warhammer Fantasy is a fantasy setting, created by Games Workshop, which is used by many of the company's games. Some of the best-known games set in this world are: the table top wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay pen-and-paper role-playing game, and the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Another game, Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, is a free-to-play release. Warhammer is notable for its "dark and gritty" background world, which features a culture similar in appearance to Early Modern Germany crossed with Tolkien's Middle-earth. "Chaos" is central to the setting, as the forces of Chaos are attempting unceasingly to tear the mortal world asunder. The world itself is populated with a variety of races such as humans, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, lizardmen, ogres, and other creatures familiar to many fantasy/role-playing settings."
The game itself uses one of my least favorite systems, a percentile based system. The system has you roll a pair of ten-sided dice that allow you to generate a range of numbers from 01-100. You have skills and abilities that also are rated on a range from 01 to 100. When you roll you are trying to get a result that is under the rating of the skill. So if you have a 50 Weapon Skill, then when you attack with a weapon you have to roll a 50 or less in order to hit. My main problem with this style of system is that the range you are having to deal with is so large, and in most iterations of the percentile system you never have anywhere near enough points to spend in order to make yourself reliably good at anything, or at most you can get reliably good at one thing but at the cost of being terrible at lots of other stuff. Another problem with them is that a lot of them make it very hard for you to raise a skill once you get good at it, which is somewhat realistic, but not in a way that I find enjoyable to simulate.
This particular game actually does a decent job of reducing these annoying tendencies. For one you have a small spread of attributes that all start at a fairly decent number (around 30-40) and the rating of the attribute translates into a rating for all the related skills. I.E. if you have a 45 Willpower, then all Willpower based skills will be at a 45. This is nice since you do not have to spend points on each individual skill. The method for raising skills is also much more reliable. Instead of having to roll for it and hope that you get lucky enough to raise it, you just spend XP points in order to raise them at a set rate. While this is still rather slow, it is set and regular, so that is nice.
The combat in the system has some really interesting stuff in it. Probably my favorite aspect of the game so far has been the critical hits tables. Well, really the whole damage system is pretty cool. First off you have an amount of Wounds (Hit Points). When you take damage it gets taken away from this pool of Wounds, with Armor reducing the amount from each hit. Once you are down to 0 or less wounds, each point of damage below 0 wounds translate into a point of critical damage. So if you knock someone down to -4 Wounds, then that is a 4 point critical. You roll percentile dice again on a critical table and cross reference the result with the critical rating. This gives you a number between 1-10. You then take that number and consult the specific hit location table and use the entry assigned to that number. The specific hit location is determined by reversing the digits on the dice that you rolled to hit btw. Here is an example to try and clarify all of that. Lets say you have a Weapon Skill 55. You roll the dice and get a 41. Hurrah you hit!. So take those numbers and reverse them to get 14, which gives you the hit location, with 14 I believe being the head. So that is a hit to the head. Let us assume that you have already removed all the Wounds from this target, so all damage is going to be counting towards that critical rating. Lets say you do 7 damage, so thats a +7 critical ratings. Then you roll percentile dice again. Lets say you get a 31 That means your result is an 10. You consult the Head Critical result table and you see this result: "Killed in whatever spectacular and gore-drenched fashion the player or the GM cares to describe." Huzzah! We are actually using an even more elaborate critical hits chart than the one in the book that was written by an actual M.D., so its very interesting and detailed.
The rest of the game is fairly straight forward. If you have any experience with things like D&D you will be familiar with how most of this stuff works on a basic level. Nothing too complicated.
As far as the story and campaign have been going, we are playing through a module in the back of the rulebook; and it has been pretty fun. Its a bit of a mystery investigation type of thing so far. The party is composed of a Human Thief, a Dwarven Troll Slayer, a Dwarven Shield Breaker, and a Human Initiate of Sigmar (my character). We have fled a huge enemy invasion, fought Beastmen, Skaven, Ghouls, and other beasties. We got a Relic of Sigmar, but after it was turned in it was stolen. We pursued it but have not been able to find it yet. We've helped out some blind priest, and delved into sewers one too many times. The play has been quite enjoyable. I look forward to even more sessions.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
September Game Day
Another month has passed and another NWARPG Game Day has come (yay) and passed (aww). This month it was another Benton County one, out at Gamer Utopia in Rogers. The last one at their current location, by the time we get back that direction in a couple of months they will have moved into a new store. I kind of liked the old mall location, for the extra stuff conveniently located around it in the same building; but hopefully the new location will be even better.
This Game Day saw a good number of RPGs being played, and a decent smattering of board games as well. There were some familiar faces that had been missed at the past few game days (I'm looking at you John), as well as the vast majority of the regular crew of wonderful people who I've come to know and enjoy at these and other gaming events over the past few months. I did not really pay much attention to numbers or counts or anything, but my guess is that we were at least at the 25 mark and maybe upwards of 30 people there playing various games.
I had a truly wonderful time playing in a Dungeon World game. As usual I absolutely love playing in any of the Apocalypse World based systems a hell of a lot more than I have enjoyed my short forays into running them. As a player this system just really works for me and I have a ton of fun with it. It also helps that I've played with great groups and great GMs every time. This time of course was no exception. Chris Colbath ran a very fun game, which saw our party of six adventurers undertaking a perilous quest to find and destroy the Corrupted Master.
Our party was composed of Baldric the bard, Mouse the halfling thief, Wolf the half-elf ranger and his bear companion Bear, Lux the paladin, "Horcrux" (not the actual name, but that's what the GM kept accidentely saying so it stuck) the elven druid, and Galadiir the elven mage (ME!). It was quite an impressive party with lots of varying powers, skills, and alignments (shhhhh, I was EVIL!!)
I totally hammed up my character by dubbing him Galadirr the Unsure and playing him as being totally uncertain and in doubt about everything, including his own magical abilities. I was constantly "hoping this works!" when casting a spell, and pointing out to the paladin that "the gods don't actually exist" I also did a terrible take on a British accent, and cracked jokes as often as I could; so for me at least it was a ton of fun. Lots of others were laughing, so I think it was fun for most if not all.\
Our group faced an attack by goblins right off the bat as we were camped out on our journey to find the Corrupted Master (CM). We handily defeated the foes, thanks in large part to my amazing fireball casting skills. I'm not entirely certain I believe the stories that they rest of the party put forth about my fireball hitting them as well, I think they just are too embarrassed to admit falling into the camp fire. After defeating the goblins we made haste to the secret mountain fortress of the CM, which I had never seen before because I definitely had not served an intern-ship with him back during wizarding school. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
After defeating another horde of goblins, and more party members stumbling into random fires that totally were not my fault, I consulted with the most trustworthy sort of individual (a demon) and learned of the secret passage into the tower that I totally did not already know about at all. We managed to sneak inside and find our way to the CM after only some minor difficulties involving illusions, big scary spiders, fire traps (not my fault!), zombies, and paladins walking directly into the path of innocent wizard's fireballs. An epic battle ensued, and after some hard fighting, and a fireball landing on the party that was NOT cast by their own wizard, I managed to just barely kill the CM right as his teleportation ritual finished and the body faded away. The evil wizarding tower was now under new management!!
As I said it was a ton of fun, and hey only 3/5 of my fireballs hit the party! I rolled well enough on a lot of those castings that I wish I'd taken the empower magic ability, I would have been doing a whole lot more friendly fire damage!
The other two RPGs that went on were a Pathfinder Society scenario (with 5-7 players I believe) and a game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie RPG, with 5-6 players as well. I was busy in my game, and was bugging the board game players when I was not; so I didn't pay much attention to either one, but we have such high quality GMs and players at these events that I'm sure both were a ton of fun. Sadly the Marvel game did not end up happening, the GM ended up being late and leaving early because of health issues I believe.
As far as board games went I got to play in a few, and there were a ton going on that I saw but didn't participate in. A group of 5 or so players were unfortunately cursed with having to play Cosmic Encounters, and while they seemed to have fun I'm sure inside they were crying. ;)
A couple of folks played the new Fantasy Flight Star Wars mini game, that looked like fun and I'll have to try it out sometime. A few games of Jungle Speed happened, with Emily winning them all I hear. War of 1812 was played at least once with a group of five, and from the conversations about it afterwards I think everyone had fun and is looking to play it again. Another one I'll have to try sometime.
I was able to play a 2 player game of Pandemic with Bobby, which we lost due to outbreaks. Also got to try out Formula D for the first time. I was trying to be careful and not hurt my car for the majority of the race, which doesn't lend itself to a winning strategy; so I lost that one as well, but it is a very cool game that I think does a great job of capturing the flavor and theme. Which is something I'm always interested in seeing and learning from.
The big highlight of the board games for me was getting to playtest a game of my own design. My election satire card game was played for the first time and I was super happy with the result. No, it wasn't anywhere near perfect, nor was it the greatest idea ever. But it was somewhat enjoyable, and I think most of the people there saw potential for a decent game to come out of it after more testing and refinement; which is all I could possibly ask for at this stage. The two big problems were the balancing of the numbers, which I 100% admit were largely arbitrary and just thrown out there to see what would work, and a need for more interesting and dynamic choices at various points in the game. I got some really good feedback and was super grateful to the group that was willing to try it out. Looking forward to fixing some things and trying it again. Thanks Bobby, John, Taylor and Josh!
EDIT: Oh after I posted I remember that Anders and Chris did quite a bit of discussion about their "Pirate LARP" game, and may have played through some of the mechanics. Another awesome example of the great community of gamers we have here in the area. Chris mentioned an idea of making a website that would be a central hub for all our local game design stuff; which I think would be awesome.
This Game Day saw a good number of RPGs being played, and a decent smattering of board games as well. There were some familiar faces that had been missed at the past few game days (I'm looking at you John), as well as the vast majority of the regular crew of wonderful people who I've come to know and enjoy at these and other gaming events over the past few months. I did not really pay much attention to numbers or counts or anything, but my guess is that we were at least at the 25 mark and maybe upwards of 30 people there playing various games.
I had a truly wonderful time playing in a Dungeon World game. As usual I absolutely love playing in any of the Apocalypse World based systems a hell of a lot more than I have enjoyed my short forays into running them. As a player this system just really works for me and I have a ton of fun with it. It also helps that I've played with great groups and great GMs every time. This time of course was no exception. Chris Colbath ran a very fun game, which saw our party of six adventurers undertaking a perilous quest to find and destroy the Corrupted Master.
Our party was composed of Baldric the bard, Mouse the halfling thief, Wolf the half-elf ranger and his bear companion Bear, Lux the paladin, "Horcrux" (not the actual name, but that's what the GM kept accidentely saying so it stuck) the elven druid, and Galadiir the elven mage (ME!). It was quite an impressive party with lots of varying powers, skills, and alignments (shhhhh, I was EVIL!!)
I totally hammed up my character by dubbing him Galadirr the Unsure and playing him as being totally uncertain and in doubt about everything, including his own magical abilities. I was constantly "hoping this works!" when casting a spell, and pointing out to the paladin that "the gods don't actually exist" I also did a terrible take on a British accent, and cracked jokes as often as I could; so for me at least it was a ton of fun. Lots of others were laughing, so I think it was fun for most if not all.\
Our group faced an attack by goblins right off the bat as we were camped out on our journey to find the Corrupted Master (CM). We handily defeated the foes, thanks in large part to my amazing fireball casting skills. I'm not entirely certain I believe the stories that they rest of the party put forth about my fireball hitting them as well, I think they just are too embarrassed to admit falling into the camp fire. After defeating the goblins we made haste to the secret mountain fortress of the CM, which I had never seen before because I definitely had not served an intern-ship with him back during wizarding school. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
After defeating another horde of goblins, and more party members stumbling into random fires that totally were not my fault, I consulted with the most trustworthy sort of individual (a demon) and learned of the secret passage into the tower that I totally did not already know about at all. We managed to sneak inside and find our way to the CM after only some minor difficulties involving illusions, big scary spiders, fire traps (not my fault!), zombies, and paladins walking directly into the path of innocent wizard's fireballs. An epic battle ensued, and after some hard fighting, and a fireball landing on the party that was NOT cast by their own wizard, I managed to just barely kill the CM right as his teleportation ritual finished and the body faded away. The evil wizarding tower was now under new management!!
As I said it was a ton of fun, and hey only 3/5 of my fireballs hit the party! I rolled well enough on a lot of those castings that I wish I'd taken the empower magic ability, I would have been doing a whole lot more friendly fire damage!
The other two RPGs that went on were a Pathfinder Society scenario (with 5-7 players I believe) and a game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie RPG, with 5-6 players as well. I was busy in my game, and was bugging the board game players when I was not; so I didn't pay much attention to either one, but we have such high quality GMs and players at these events that I'm sure both were a ton of fun. Sadly the Marvel game did not end up happening, the GM ended up being late and leaving early because of health issues I believe.
As far as board games went I got to play in a few, and there were a ton going on that I saw but didn't participate in. A group of 5 or so players were unfortunately cursed with having to play Cosmic Encounters, and while they seemed to have fun I'm sure inside they were crying. ;)
A couple of folks played the new Fantasy Flight Star Wars mini game, that looked like fun and I'll have to try it out sometime. A few games of Jungle Speed happened, with Emily winning them all I hear. War of 1812 was played at least once with a group of five, and from the conversations about it afterwards I think everyone had fun and is looking to play it again. Another one I'll have to try sometime.
I was able to play a 2 player game of Pandemic with Bobby, which we lost due to outbreaks. Also got to try out Formula D for the first time. I was trying to be careful and not hurt my car for the majority of the race, which doesn't lend itself to a winning strategy; so I lost that one as well, but it is a very cool game that I think does a great job of capturing the flavor and theme. Which is something I'm always interested in seeing and learning from.
The big highlight of the board games for me was getting to playtest a game of my own design. My election satire card game was played for the first time and I was super happy with the result. No, it wasn't anywhere near perfect, nor was it the greatest idea ever. But it was somewhat enjoyable, and I think most of the people there saw potential for a decent game to come out of it after more testing and refinement; which is all I could possibly ask for at this stage. The two big problems were the balancing of the numbers, which I 100% admit were largely arbitrary and just thrown out there to see what would work, and a need for more interesting and dynamic choices at various points in the game. I got some really good feedback and was super grateful to the group that was willing to try it out. Looking forward to fixing some things and trying it again. Thanks Bobby, John, Taylor and Josh!
EDIT: Oh after I posted I remember that Anders and Chris did quite a bit of discussion about their "Pirate LARP" game, and may have played through some of the mechanics. Another awesome example of the great community of gamers we have here in the area. Chris mentioned an idea of making a website that would be a central hub for all our local game design stuff; which I think would be awesome.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Dresden Files Session 3
This session began with a trip to the Seattle Underground. Cyphus was not entirely certain about this little side trip, what with the dirt and such that is usually associated with underground things. I mean these clothes might be only a glamour, but they are sure patterned after some very expensive items! But the exciting stuff was going to be happening down there, and Selise was depending on him for some more entertainment.
Thankfully the whole thing turned out to be a fun journey in wardrobe variation! Cyphus got to play fashionably challenged tourist, fashionable Victorian era train passenger, and appropriately backwards farm person! So many glamours, so much fun. The magical train thing that we rode on was very nice as well, Cyphus may have to get one at the Menagerie.
We met an interesting guy named Crafter. He specializes in creating magical weapons and items. Cyphus was a bit suspicious of the fact that this guy was making a whole bunch of weaponized magical spells that could be used by just anyone. But he didn't really stay all that worried, because he met someone even more interesting...Jerry! He is such an interesting fellow. Super fun to talk to, and with the most amazing talent for finding things. Oh! There was also a gate to the Peach Spring place! Crafter had made it for something, but Cyphus can't remember who. Doesn't really matter though, this is how he can get his egg hatched.
Apparently the thing needs five coins to open it up. Jerry has one, but it was meant for someone or something like that. Cyphus told Jerry that he would be very interested in any other coins that Jerry might find. Oh and there was a girl in the mirror. The dead one. Apparently she had been spying on all of us. Thankfully it was only the magically significant stuff or something like that, so most of Cyphus' escapades are probably not on record.
For some reason we decided to go plant a fake ring at George's place. Finally something Cyphus was good at. Of course it was super easy to sneak in and plant it, with a veil to hide himself from sight, and his finely honed skills at breaking and entering. There was also a nice lucky break that the security system was having some maintenance done. Cyphus was still really impressive though, no doubt about that. He managed to quickly switch out the ring for a shiny coin, which just happened to be one of the ones for that gate! Now he only had to locate three more. There was some sort of altercation with George's folks, but nothing really came of it. Oh, Steven signed some sort of deal with George; but Cyphus didn't pay much attention to that.
After that we went to a little get together at Blue Jazz. There were some interesting people there, but by Oberon they were all shown up by the presence of the Summer Lady! She was glorious. Cyphus could not help but being awestruck. He did his best to contain his excitement and stick by Selise. She was after all his connection to the higher Sidhe society. The silly white court vampire was talking about peace or cooperation or something like that. Cyphus made it clear that his loyalty was with the Summer Court. Then some lady came in and threatened a bunch of people. How drool.
After that Chin Xi talked to the group, telling us how she was trying to get to Peach Blossom Spring. What luck, that was where Cyphus wanted to go as well. Cyphus agreed to help her if she let him hatch the egg in the spring. After that everyone left the bar, and walked into a war zone. Cyphus was worried about the other Summer fae, so he rushed quickly home to the Zoo to check on things. When he got there he discovered that Kaelyn had been killed (no big loss), the Summer Lady and her Knight were at the Zoo recuperating (OMG OMG OMG), and Selise was missing (OH NO!!).
Cyphus rushed off to try and find her. He got Akina to help him sniff out her location, and found her trapped in a small old-fashioned glass bottle. Cyphus began to panic when he was unable to pull out the cork or break the bottle despite his best efforts. He quickly got a hold of the magic users he knew, namely Chong and Jacob, asking for assistance. Thankfully Jacob was able to set Selise free. Cyphus and Selise were both very grateful, and very interested in seeking revenge against the one who had imprisoned her in the first place, Rebecca Black.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Tannhauser: A Second Take, Looking For A Third
So I broke out the very first Fantasy Flight game that I ever bought for out board game day this last Sunday, Tannhauser. This is a tactical miniature combat board game with some cool mechanics and a really cool theme. The theme is Weird War II, or basically alternate history World War II with crazy supernatural stuff and magic and creatures.
The game plays out in a fairly simple manner. You have tow sides, Nazis and Union (this world's version of the Allies). Each side has 5 characters, 3 heroes and 2 troopers. On a given turn you activate each of the characters individually, one at a time and alternating between the factions. Each character can do both a Move and an Action. The Action can interrupt the Move, so you can run up to a door, shoot through it, and continue on by. You have various stats that determine how far you can move, how well you attack, how good your defense is, etc. You also have up to four pieces of equipment that give you abilities, powers, and bonuses. In general you're rolling a pool of d10s equal to your stat and aiming for a DC equal to an opponent's stat. There are of course a ton of little details; but no one of them is overly complicated and they are easy enough to handle when they come up.
In the past me and my friend Jeremy has played this game quite a bit. We found it to be really enjoyable and a nice challenging game. The expansion adds a new faction that is way overpowered, but we really enjoyed the base game. Unfortunately I had not had the chance to play it in quite some time. Also on a down note, this time when I finally did break it out we were not completely able to replicate the fun.
We had five players for this game. The game can handle up to 10 people technically, with each character on a side being played by a separate player. We had 2 Union players (Bobby and Anders) and 3 Nazi players (Me, John, and Tim). We split up the characters as each team saw fit, and proceeded to play. From the very beginning some huge inconsistencies in the rules and the powers became readily apparent. The whole game was quite unbalanced and the Union was on their back foot from the get go. This was in large part due to the use of various items and abilities that we never used back in the day; hence why it was quite surprising and unexpected to me.
There were quite a few very valid complaints and problems pointed out, and Bobby and Anders did not seem to be really enjoying themselves. I was quite disappointed. I was especially disappointed to hear Anders say that it kinda put him off on his plans to make his own tactical miniatures game. I also am planning my own game of this style, but I took the failings as a guide on how to do better. I hope Anders takes the same sort of lesson away and continues with his game.
On the good news side though, I was reminded of the fact that there is a whole revised rulebook for the game, so I spent the $5 to download it. After reading through it I was very happy to see the various changes. Combat is streamlined. Overpowered abilities and equipment have been fixed. Smoke grenades actually work like you would expect, and give you some defensive bonuses. Almost every single one of the complaints we had seems to be fixed or at least helped out. I really think the game deserves a third chance and I hope I can convince the group to give it that chance. I'll keep it around for future board game days and Game Days, and we'll see.
The game plays out in a fairly simple manner. You have tow sides, Nazis and Union (this world's version of the Allies). Each side has 5 characters, 3 heroes and 2 troopers. On a given turn you activate each of the characters individually, one at a time and alternating between the factions. Each character can do both a Move and an Action. The Action can interrupt the Move, so you can run up to a door, shoot through it, and continue on by. You have various stats that determine how far you can move, how well you attack, how good your defense is, etc. You also have up to four pieces of equipment that give you abilities, powers, and bonuses. In general you're rolling a pool of d10s equal to your stat and aiming for a DC equal to an opponent's stat. There are of course a ton of little details; but no one of them is overly complicated and they are easy enough to handle when they come up.
In the past me and my friend Jeremy has played this game quite a bit. We found it to be really enjoyable and a nice challenging game. The expansion adds a new faction that is way overpowered, but we really enjoyed the base game. Unfortunately I had not had the chance to play it in quite some time. Also on a down note, this time when I finally did break it out we were not completely able to replicate the fun.
We had five players for this game. The game can handle up to 10 people technically, with each character on a side being played by a separate player. We had 2 Union players (Bobby and Anders) and 3 Nazi players (Me, John, and Tim). We split up the characters as each team saw fit, and proceeded to play. From the very beginning some huge inconsistencies in the rules and the powers became readily apparent. The whole game was quite unbalanced and the Union was on their back foot from the get go. This was in large part due to the use of various items and abilities that we never used back in the day; hence why it was quite surprising and unexpected to me.
There were quite a few very valid complaints and problems pointed out, and Bobby and Anders did not seem to be really enjoying themselves. I was quite disappointed. I was especially disappointed to hear Anders say that it kinda put him off on his plans to make his own tactical miniatures game. I also am planning my own game of this style, but I took the failings as a guide on how to do better. I hope Anders takes the same sort of lesson away and continues with his game.
On the good news side though, I was reminded of the fact that there is a whole revised rulebook for the game, so I spent the $5 to download it. After reading through it I was very happy to see the various changes. Combat is streamlined. Overpowered abilities and equipment have been fixed. Smoke grenades actually work like you would expect, and give you some defensive bonuses. Almost every single one of the complaints we had seems to be fixed or at least helped out. I really think the game deserves a third chance and I hope I can convince the group to give it that chance. I'll keep it around for future board game days and Game Days, and we'll see.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Dresden Files: Seven Sins of Seattle
So I'm giving the Dresden Files RPG another try. I have to say that almost every time I try out a FATE based game I'm both reminded of how I hate the swinginess of FATE dice, and how I love all the other parts of the system. Plus I love the Dresden Files setting, and we have a great group of folks participating.
The setting we decided to build for this campaign was Seattle. A few of the players are from that area, and in general it is a very interesting city that has a ton of possibility for magic and mayhem. We're dealing with a new power from the East gathering in the old Chinatown, with all the big players in town having left to fight the Vampire War, and with some sort of Old Power stirring underneath everything.
We have some amazingly cool locations. The Blue Jazz Nightclub is both the Accorded Neutral Grounds, and the den of a White Court vampire named Sven who holds items of great import to people and allows them to visit and see them in order to feed on their lust for the item. Pike's Place Market is a hub of all sorts of crazy powers and important shops. My character's stomping grounds are at the Woodland Park Zoo, a Summer Court bastion that houses a menagerie of mystical beasts. Lakeview Cemetery is watched over by Bruce Lee's ghost and Denny Park is watched over by the denizens of the mysterious and dangerous Denny family. There are Were-Rats in the Underground, Triads in Chinatown, a Biomancer at the hospital, and something mysterious going on at the Space Needle.
Our cast of character includes:
Cyphus(me) - the Summer Court Changeling who is a Keeper of the Menagerie for the Sidhe
Ellethwen (Elle) McFadden - a Summer Changeling Hairdresser
Akina - the Pack less Werewolf with the occult bookstore
Chong Xi - the Emerging Kung Fu Master with a vigilantism habit
Molly Brennan - the mortal Detective in the Know with a loose vision on ethics
Steven Williams - the "not-Zombie" Social Manipulator with a penchant for instigating trouble
Jacob Morkraven - the Wizard of Redemption with haunting family issues
As you can see quite a collection of big personalities and interesting folks. So far we've had a very good time in our two sessions.
In our first session all of us experienced a similar dream/vision which turned out to be the final magical act of a dying wizard named Jenny Denny. Yes she is connected to the mysterious Denny family and yes her name is really Jenny Denny. All the players were able to identify where the vision was set (Denny Park) and headed there quickly for various reasons. Cyphus was just annoyed that someone got into his head uninvited and wanted to find out what was going on. He traveled through the Nevernever (magical, Fae realm) and after exiting back into the real world outside the park he hid himself with a Veil and went to find the body.
Some of the others were already there and were inspecting the fallen girl, so Cyphus quickly snuck over to her purse and palmed the $4000 it contained. After that he moved over by the body and when he discovered traces of ectoplasm he dropped the Veil, appearing in the middle of everyone, and pointed this fact out. After folks recovered from the surprise much discussion about what had happened began. No real conclusions were reached, but a clue pointing to the Blue Jazz Nightclub showed up, and when it was discovered there was some sort of event happening there that weekend, we decided to check it out.
It ended up being some sort of formal party, so nice clothes and dates were required. Cyphus had the clothes covered (he's Fae after all!) but needed a date. Luckily a Sidhe lady was visiting town after donating a new beastie to the menagerie, and the Lady Selise was more than willing to accompany him to the event. So with a gorgeous Fae woman on his arm and his own personal charisma (Cyphus' glamour appearance looks like Eric Northmen from True Blood BTW for those that know the show) Cyphus made one hell of an entrance at the party.
The normal niceties and chit chat happened for a bit, with everyone dancing around the two non-PC pairs; a couple of Triad folks and the local Red Court vamp with arm candy. After a bit the owner, Sven, came out and invited everyone back into the inner sanctum to view his collection. There were quite a few interesting items there, but Cyphus had eyes for only one thing, an actual DRAGON EGG!
Lots of talking, coveting, and skulduggery were going on all over the room, but Cyphus did not pay much attention to anything but the egg. When his attention finally got pulled back to the world around him his date Lady Selise was having a bit of a verbal cat fight with the Red Court vamp Scarlet and things were about to escalate. And boy did it ever escalate! By the end of the proceeding fight Akina had torn the vampire's throat out!
Cyphus would have left it all well enough alone if Selise had not been on one side of it. He ended up palming a liquor bottle off Akina and glamouring it to seem like holy water in order to distract and scare the vampire; which worked. In the end every PC survived and walked away mostly free. Oh and some of the final wheeling and dealing managed to get me the Dragon Egg! As well as Jacob getting some special magical sword; which led to an invitation to a meeting with the Triad folks (which was a good thing since the big Triad bruiser at the party was the main suspect for the killing of Jenny Denny).
The second session primarily featured the aforementioned meeting and a some follow up action. Cyphus did not do much this time around (mostly because his player was exhausted). He facilitated a meeting between Jacob, Chong Xi, and Selise, in which Selise got them to promise to bring along a spy butterfly creature to the meeting in exchange for some information. Then the group met up at Akina's bookstore before proceeding to a meeting with the Triad representative. Cyphus basically just trailed along because he was curious, but not actively interested, until they reached the Triad stronghold at the Egg Long restaurant and saw a full fledged dragon skull. Once again lots of talking and such happened in the background, but Cyphus did not pay much attention because, dragon skull! Something was decided about going to seek out a warlock in the Underground.
So on the way to the Underground the group decided to take out Selise's butterfly. Cyphus' attention was drawn by this, but he decided to see what would happen. If the initial assault on it had somehow failed to do anything I would have probably had Cyphus speak up and play like he was destroying it, but instead take the power into himself so he would continue to serve as Selise's spy. But lo and behold, when you attack a butterfly belonging to a Sidhe, it turns into an ogre. A group of purple monkey demons and Triad looking enforcers also decided to join the party in the alleyway and crazy times happened. Cyphus did not want to attack the ogre in case Selise was still able to see through its eyes, so he focused his actions on the demons; using his power to manipulate a targets mind to make it feel the effects of extreme drunkenness.
The battle was big and epic, but this post is getting really long and I don't want to type it all out. Besides Cyphus doesn't really care about the violence, just the results. He was pissed by the flaming poop attacks of the crazy monkey demons though! Fortunately due to his inhuman toughness and recovery abilities, as well as some good dodging he walked away from the whole thing totally unscathed. Everyone else came off much the worse for wear with lots of consequences. Oh well, not his problem. The toughs were killed or driven off, the ogre slaughtered, and the demon beat down to size and captured. The party decided to head to a nearby cheap hotel in order to interrogate the demon and decide on what to do next.
On the way Cyphus decided to be nice with some of his recently acquired money and buy some replacement clothes for Akina, since she keeps destroying hers when she "wolfs out". Unfortunately the only clothes quickly available were some touristy type sweat pants/shirts. Cyphus apologized for the crude garb, but still felt bad and promised Akina that he owed her one for such a terrible fashion insult.
Cyphus left the group still talking (because I had to leave to get ready for work) and headed back to have an interesting conversation with Selise, where much flirtation and plotting happened. It looks like I'll be having to try and get a hold of that magic sword for my own ends. There will also be some down time between session so I'm going to hang around Akina's bookstore to do some more research on my dragon egg.
The setting we decided to build for this campaign was Seattle. A few of the players are from that area, and in general it is a very interesting city that has a ton of possibility for magic and mayhem. We're dealing with a new power from the East gathering in the old Chinatown, with all the big players in town having left to fight the Vampire War, and with some sort of Old Power stirring underneath everything.
We have some amazingly cool locations. The Blue Jazz Nightclub is both the Accorded Neutral Grounds, and the den of a White Court vampire named Sven who holds items of great import to people and allows them to visit and see them in order to feed on their lust for the item. Pike's Place Market is a hub of all sorts of crazy powers and important shops. My character's stomping grounds are at the Woodland Park Zoo, a Summer Court bastion that houses a menagerie of mystical beasts. Lakeview Cemetery is watched over by Bruce Lee's ghost and Denny Park is watched over by the denizens of the mysterious and dangerous Denny family. There are Were-Rats in the Underground, Triads in Chinatown, a Biomancer at the hospital, and something mysterious going on at the Space Needle.
Our cast of character includes:
Cyphus(me) - the Summer Court Changeling who is a Keeper of the Menagerie for the Sidhe
Ellethwen (Elle) McFadden - a Summer Changeling Hairdresser
Akina - the Pack less Werewolf with the occult bookstore
Chong Xi - the Emerging Kung Fu Master with a vigilantism habit
Molly Brennan - the mortal Detective in the Know with a loose vision on ethics
Steven Williams - the "not-Zombie" Social Manipulator with a penchant for instigating trouble
Jacob Morkraven - the Wizard of Redemption with haunting family issues
As you can see quite a collection of big personalities and interesting folks. So far we've had a very good time in our two sessions.
In our first session all of us experienced a similar dream/vision which turned out to be the final magical act of a dying wizard named Jenny Denny. Yes she is connected to the mysterious Denny family and yes her name is really Jenny Denny. All the players were able to identify where the vision was set (Denny Park) and headed there quickly for various reasons. Cyphus was just annoyed that someone got into his head uninvited and wanted to find out what was going on. He traveled through the Nevernever (magical, Fae realm) and after exiting back into the real world outside the park he hid himself with a Veil and went to find the body.
Some of the others were already there and were inspecting the fallen girl, so Cyphus quickly snuck over to her purse and palmed the $4000 it contained. After that he moved over by the body and when he discovered traces of ectoplasm he dropped the Veil, appearing in the middle of everyone, and pointed this fact out. After folks recovered from the surprise much discussion about what had happened began. No real conclusions were reached, but a clue pointing to the Blue Jazz Nightclub showed up, and when it was discovered there was some sort of event happening there that weekend, we decided to check it out.
It ended up being some sort of formal party, so nice clothes and dates were required. Cyphus had the clothes covered (he's Fae after all!) but needed a date. Luckily a Sidhe lady was visiting town after donating a new beastie to the menagerie, and the Lady Selise was more than willing to accompany him to the event. So with a gorgeous Fae woman on his arm and his own personal charisma (Cyphus' glamour appearance looks like Eric Northmen from True Blood BTW for those that know the show) Cyphus made one hell of an entrance at the party.
The normal niceties and chit chat happened for a bit, with everyone dancing around the two non-PC pairs; a couple of Triad folks and the local Red Court vamp with arm candy. After a bit the owner, Sven, came out and invited everyone back into the inner sanctum to view his collection. There were quite a few interesting items there, but Cyphus had eyes for only one thing, an actual DRAGON EGG!
Lots of talking, coveting, and skulduggery were going on all over the room, but Cyphus did not pay much attention to anything but the egg. When his attention finally got pulled back to the world around him his date Lady Selise was having a bit of a verbal cat fight with the Red Court vamp Scarlet and things were about to escalate. And boy did it ever escalate! By the end of the proceeding fight Akina had torn the vampire's throat out!
Cyphus would have left it all well enough alone if Selise had not been on one side of it. He ended up palming a liquor bottle off Akina and glamouring it to seem like holy water in order to distract and scare the vampire; which worked. In the end every PC survived and walked away mostly free. Oh and some of the final wheeling and dealing managed to get me the Dragon Egg! As well as Jacob getting some special magical sword; which led to an invitation to a meeting with the Triad folks (which was a good thing since the big Triad bruiser at the party was the main suspect for the killing of Jenny Denny).
The second session primarily featured the aforementioned meeting and a some follow up action. Cyphus did not do much this time around (mostly because his player was exhausted). He facilitated a meeting between Jacob, Chong Xi, and Selise, in which Selise got them to promise to bring along a spy butterfly creature to the meeting in exchange for some information. Then the group met up at Akina's bookstore before proceeding to a meeting with the Triad representative. Cyphus basically just trailed along because he was curious, but not actively interested, until they reached the Triad stronghold at the Egg Long restaurant and saw a full fledged dragon skull. Once again lots of talking and such happened in the background, but Cyphus did not pay much attention because, dragon skull! Something was decided about going to seek out a warlock in the Underground.
So on the way to the Underground the group decided to take out Selise's butterfly. Cyphus' attention was drawn by this, but he decided to see what would happen. If the initial assault on it had somehow failed to do anything I would have probably had Cyphus speak up and play like he was destroying it, but instead take the power into himself so he would continue to serve as Selise's spy. But lo and behold, when you attack a butterfly belonging to a Sidhe, it turns into an ogre. A group of purple monkey demons and Triad looking enforcers also decided to join the party in the alleyway and crazy times happened. Cyphus did not want to attack the ogre in case Selise was still able to see through its eyes, so he focused his actions on the demons; using his power to manipulate a targets mind to make it feel the effects of extreme drunkenness.
The battle was big and epic, but this post is getting really long and I don't want to type it all out. Besides Cyphus doesn't really care about the violence, just the results. He was pissed by the flaming poop attacks of the crazy monkey demons though! Fortunately due to his inhuman toughness and recovery abilities, as well as some good dodging he walked away from the whole thing totally unscathed. Everyone else came off much the worse for wear with lots of consequences. Oh well, not his problem. The toughs were killed or driven off, the ogre slaughtered, and the demon beat down to size and captured. The party decided to head to a nearby cheap hotel in order to interrogate the demon and decide on what to do next.
On the way Cyphus decided to be nice with some of his recently acquired money and buy some replacement clothes for Akina, since she keeps destroying hers when she "wolfs out". Unfortunately the only clothes quickly available were some touristy type sweat pants/shirts. Cyphus apologized for the crude garb, but still felt bad and promised Akina that he owed her one for such a terrible fashion insult.
Cyphus left the group still talking (because I had to leave to get ready for work) and headed back to have an interesting conversation with Selise, where much flirtation and plotting happened. It looks like I'll be having to try and get a hold of that magic sword for my own ends. There will also be some down time between session so I'm going to hang around Akina's bookstore to do some more research on my dragon egg.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Mistborn RPG
Two Sundays ago me and my Siloam RPG group did a character creation session for the Mistborn Adventure Game RPG. We are going to playing in our first session on this upcoming Sunday. I have to say that I enjoyed the character creation quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the system and the story play.
The Mistborn RPG has one huge advantage in its corner, and that is the author of the novels it is based on, Brandon Sanderson. For one thing, he is a very gifted storyteller and world builder who has created an interesting setting that is just filled with opportunities for making your own characters and stories. The whole of Scadrial is very thematic and flavorful. He is also a genius when it comes to creating and quantifying magic systems in his worlds, and this has translated into a very unique and dynamic system that makes for some great game mechanics.
The game also benefits from the fact that the creators were more interested in making a narrative and rules light system instead of a heavily simulationist one. As I have said above, the first play session is still. upcoming, but from a brief read through of the rules it looks like there is just enough crunch there to do what you need to, but that the rules stay out of the way of the story nicely.
The only real concern I have is that there is at least one incident of, shall we say wanting to "have you cake and eat it too". There is an element to a character in this game called Standings. The issue I have with them is that you both roll them as die pools to achieve things, and also apparently spend points off of them, lowering your die pools, to achieve other things. Its the whole dilemma of possibly running into a situation of "In order to succeed I have get worse at doing this thing in the future", which just feels weird to me.
The character creation system was interactive and cool. I had quite a bit of fun doing it. The first step is to decide what you Crew is like. The "party" in this game is called a Crew, and you as a group must come up with the reasons that they are together, what they have in common, and what they want to achieve. To do so you answer three questions. What is your common cause? Who is your primary target? What is your preferred method? For our Crew we decided that our cause was bringing hope and a better world, that our primary target was the Steel Ministry (the oppressive police force/zealous church that enforces the will of the totalitarian government), and our primary method would be theft.
Step 2 is deciding on a concept for your individual character. This is a short phrase that defines who you basically are. Mine was Terrisman Con-artist (the Terris are a subjugated people who work primarily as highly trained servants and who secretly keep alive a distinctive racial magical art called Feruchemy). We also had some idealistic nobles, a disgraced Kandra (shapeshifter race)and an ambitious Skaa (peasant) to round out the group. The next step was to answer a series of 10 important questions.
The following questions give you various traits that both define your character and help you out:
1) Why did you join the crew?
2) How did you live before you joined the crew?
3) What special skill do you bring to the crew?
4) What is your most distinctive feature?
5) How do other people describe your personality?
The next three have to be answered with the following three answers: Strong, Average, Weak. You can only assign one answer to each question and must use all three answers. These define your various attributes and abilities:
6) Do you have any special powers (like magic or shapeshifting)?
7) Are you especially fit, smart, or charistmatic?
8) Are you well-off or do you struggle to get by?
Then you get a tragedy:
9) What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?
And a Destiny:
10) What do you believe if your ultimate purpose?
The next step is mostly bookkeeping stuff. You go through and assign different sized pools of points to your Powers, Attributes, and Standing; the pools depending on what answers you gave the corresponding questions in question 6-8. Then you fill in the details. You pick your race, though many of the character types with specific powers are limited to certain races (like my guy had Feruchemy so he had to be Terris). Next is a name, then setting your damage tracks, and choosing equipment. Then you are done and ready to play.
Like I said my guy is a Terrisman Con-artist. He is the leader of our Crew and is meant to be a smart, charming, calculating mastermind type character. He is heavily based off the Nate character on the show Leverage if you have seen that. He joined the crew to try and defeat the Steel Ministry, because he sees them as a primary force for oppression and terribleness in the world. His job before joining up was a Steward, or highly trained servant, to a noble house. His special skill is the ability to always have a plan.
His most distinctive feature is an aura of companion-ability (not a word I know), which is to say that he just makes people want to be around him and be his friend. Other people apparently see him as inspiring (at least I think that is what the group decided on. He is a Feruchemist, so he has Strong powers. I wanted him to have a high Charm and Wit, so he has Average attributes, and his Standings are Weak, but that kinda fits a servant. His Tragedy was that his previous three crews had been caught and killed by the Steel Ministry, and his ultimate purpose (in his mind at least) is to show the people that don't have to fear and worship the Steel Ministry and its evil Inquisitors.
Feruchemy is a magic system that allows a practitioner of it to store certain qualities in special metal objects that he wears or carries, and then call upon those qualities with great speed and in typically vast amounts at a later time. The downside if that you become deficient in those qualities while storing. For instance you could store up vision in a Tinmind. While you are doing it you become practically blind, but when you later use the stored vision you could spot the hair on a mouse's tail from a mile away. Each of the different types of metal available in the system lets you store up a different type of quality. I'm looking forward to the interesting challenge of creatively using and husbanding the limited resources of these stored qualities to best effect.
The resolution system in the game is fairly straight forward. You build a pool based on some sort of stat that is relevant to the task, modified possibly by traits, equipment, and circumstances. Then you roll a number of d6s equal to the pool size and your looking for pairs of the same number. If you can get a pair of a number that equals or beats the Difficulty Score, which will always be between one and five, then you succeed. Rolling 6s give you extra little bonuses if you succeed. There are the typical three stages of complexity when it comes to rolls as well. Player vs a set difficulty, Player vs. an opponent in a single roll, and Player vs. an opponent in a series of connected rolls. These are called Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts respectively.
Character Advancement is another area where I see some possibility for concern. I like the non-level based advancement. You earn XP tics and then spend those to increase skills and abilities, which is a style of system I like. The problem comes in when you look at what earns you those tics. Most of the things are either going to be once in a blue moon, or are the vague, nebulous story based criteria that are sometimes so dang hard to define and to know when you've really earned them. Passing these out at a good pace is going to take some getting used to, and would benefit form a confident GM; and unfortunately our GM, while most likely the best person to run a game in this world, is probably not going to be super confident in her abilities. But the characters luckily start out at a pretty good power level, so even if advancement is slow, things should be mostly fine.
I'm really looking forward to playing the game. I have a good feeling that this may turn out being a wonderful mix of the Matrix, Ocean's Eleven, the Chronicles of Riddick, and Lord of the Rings. Which is an amazing combination in my opinion.
The Mistborn RPG has one huge advantage in its corner, and that is the author of the novels it is based on, Brandon Sanderson. For one thing, he is a very gifted storyteller and world builder who has created an interesting setting that is just filled with opportunities for making your own characters and stories. The whole of Scadrial is very thematic and flavorful. He is also a genius when it comes to creating and quantifying magic systems in his worlds, and this has translated into a very unique and dynamic system that makes for some great game mechanics.
The game also benefits from the fact that the creators were more interested in making a narrative and rules light system instead of a heavily simulationist one. As I have said above, the first play session is still. upcoming, but from a brief read through of the rules it looks like there is just enough crunch there to do what you need to, but that the rules stay out of the way of the story nicely.
The only real concern I have is that there is at least one incident of, shall we say wanting to "have you cake and eat it too". There is an element to a character in this game called Standings. The issue I have with them is that you both roll them as die pools to achieve things, and also apparently spend points off of them, lowering your die pools, to achieve other things. Its the whole dilemma of possibly running into a situation of "In order to succeed I have get worse at doing this thing in the future", which just feels weird to me.
The character creation system was interactive and cool. I had quite a bit of fun doing it. The first step is to decide what you Crew is like. The "party" in this game is called a Crew, and you as a group must come up with the reasons that they are together, what they have in common, and what they want to achieve. To do so you answer three questions. What is your common cause? Who is your primary target? What is your preferred method? For our Crew we decided that our cause was bringing hope and a better world, that our primary target was the Steel Ministry (the oppressive police force/zealous church that enforces the will of the totalitarian government), and our primary method would be theft.
Step 2 is deciding on a concept for your individual character. This is a short phrase that defines who you basically are. Mine was Terrisman Con-artist (the Terris are a subjugated people who work primarily as highly trained servants and who secretly keep alive a distinctive racial magical art called Feruchemy). We also had some idealistic nobles, a disgraced Kandra (shapeshifter race)and an ambitious Skaa (peasant) to round out the group. The next step was to answer a series of 10 important questions.
The following questions give you various traits that both define your character and help you out:
1) Why did you join the crew?
2) How did you live before you joined the crew?
3) What special skill do you bring to the crew?
4) What is your most distinctive feature?
5) How do other people describe your personality?
The next three have to be answered with the following three answers: Strong, Average, Weak. You can only assign one answer to each question and must use all three answers. These define your various attributes and abilities:
6) Do you have any special powers (like magic or shapeshifting)?
7) Are you especially fit, smart, or charistmatic?
8) Are you well-off or do you struggle to get by?
Then you get a tragedy:
9) What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?
And a Destiny:
10) What do you believe if your ultimate purpose?
The next step is mostly bookkeeping stuff. You go through and assign different sized pools of points to your Powers, Attributes, and Standing; the pools depending on what answers you gave the corresponding questions in question 6-8. Then you fill in the details. You pick your race, though many of the character types with specific powers are limited to certain races (like my guy had Feruchemy so he had to be Terris). Next is a name, then setting your damage tracks, and choosing equipment. Then you are done and ready to play.
Like I said my guy is a Terrisman Con-artist. He is the leader of our Crew and is meant to be a smart, charming, calculating mastermind type character. He is heavily based off the Nate character on the show Leverage if you have seen that. He joined the crew to try and defeat the Steel Ministry, because he sees them as a primary force for oppression and terribleness in the world. His job before joining up was a Steward, or highly trained servant, to a noble house. His special skill is the ability to always have a plan.
His most distinctive feature is an aura of companion-ability (not a word I know), which is to say that he just makes people want to be around him and be his friend. Other people apparently see him as inspiring (at least I think that is what the group decided on. He is a Feruchemist, so he has Strong powers. I wanted him to have a high Charm and Wit, so he has Average attributes, and his Standings are Weak, but that kinda fits a servant. His Tragedy was that his previous three crews had been caught and killed by the Steel Ministry, and his ultimate purpose (in his mind at least) is to show the people that don't have to fear and worship the Steel Ministry and its evil Inquisitors.
Feruchemy is a magic system that allows a practitioner of it to store certain qualities in special metal objects that he wears or carries, and then call upon those qualities with great speed and in typically vast amounts at a later time. The downside if that you become deficient in those qualities while storing. For instance you could store up vision in a Tinmind. While you are doing it you become practically blind, but when you later use the stored vision you could spot the hair on a mouse's tail from a mile away. Each of the different types of metal available in the system lets you store up a different type of quality. I'm looking forward to the interesting challenge of creatively using and husbanding the limited resources of these stored qualities to best effect.
The resolution system in the game is fairly straight forward. You build a pool based on some sort of stat that is relevant to the task, modified possibly by traits, equipment, and circumstances. Then you roll a number of d6s equal to the pool size and your looking for pairs of the same number. If you can get a pair of a number that equals or beats the Difficulty Score, which will always be between one and five, then you succeed. Rolling 6s give you extra little bonuses if you succeed. There are the typical three stages of complexity when it comes to rolls as well. Player vs a set difficulty, Player vs. an opponent in a single roll, and Player vs. an opponent in a series of connected rolls. These are called Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts respectively.
Character Advancement is another area where I see some possibility for concern. I like the non-level based advancement. You earn XP tics and then spend those to increase skills and abilities, which is a style of system I like. The problem comes in when you look at what earns you those tics. Most of the things are either going to be once in a blue moon, or are the vague, nebulous story based criteria that are sometimes so dang hard to define and to know when you've really earned them. Passing these out at a good pace is going to take some getting used to, and would benefit form a confident GM; and unfortunately our GM, while most likely the best person to run a game in this world, is probably not going to be super confident in her abilities. But the characters luckily start out at a pretty good power level, so even if advancement is slow, things should be mostly fine.
I'm really looking forward to playing the game. I have a good feeling that this may turn out being a wonderful mix of the Matrix, Ocean's Eleven, the Chronicles of Riddick, and Lord of the Rings. Which is an amazing combination in my opinion.
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