Another very eclectic week, folks, with a lot of the new and the interesting, plus the latest release from my own Shaintar line of stuff for Savage Worlds fans. Let's get to it!
Wicked Lies and Alibis
Have you ever wanted to play in a game that features a room full of suspects and a Great Detective saying “Before this night is over, I will reveal how one of you committed the murder”? Wicked Lies and Alibis one looks like a fantastic approach to this special genre of detective fiction, one that’s a great deal of fun for the players and GM alike.
Players generate characters at the table from a selection of cards, developing a cast of complex characters who all have a motive to kill the victim. They then play through several establishing scenes in the lead-up to a murder. The remainder of the game is played as a series of structured flashback rounds where each player, in turn, assumes a degree of narrative control to frame a flashback which incriminates another character.
The Game Master has a dual role, both as facilitator of scenes, and as the Great Detective, a Non-Player Character summoned to solve the murder, who summarises the evidence revealed by the characters, and reveal the motives of the characters one-by-one before finally disclosing the identity of the murderer.
This game allows you to recreate murder mystery stories in the finest tradition of the golden-age of detective fiction. It’s also a perfect low-prep, one-shot, filler for that session where you are missing a key player, or when you want to try something different between regular games.
Goblin Quest
OK, this just looks like a damn hoot-and-a-half! Somebody should run this, but not me – I wanna play! Many fun Friday nights of laughing are embedded in this thing. It’s the added rules hacks that really got my attention.
Goblin Quest is a tabletop roleplaying game about slapstick violence, fatal ineptitude, and the greatest adventure of your life.. Play five goblins each (in sequence, not parallel) and watch them meet hilarious ends while failing to achieve the most basic tasks. Will they survive the dangerous world of the Great Battle Camp and avoid the attentions of brutal orcs, murderous bugbears, mean-spirited hobgoblins and scary wizards? Probably not. But you’ll have fun finding out!
The 132-page book is packed with full-colour art from “Calamity” Jon Morris, Iguanamouth and Tim Wilkinson Lewis, and has loads of ideas for great adventures from the leading lights of the game design world such as James Wallis, Ken Hite, Rob Heinsoo, Naomi Alderman, Merritt Kopas, and more.
This edition also contains illustrated rules-hacks to let you play the game in different settings, which are:
Kobold Quest: Create a machine that will please the Mighty Dragon King.
My Name Is Inigo Montoya Jr: They killed your father – prepare to die!
Sean Bean Quest: Play five Sean Beans (in sequence, not in parallel) and attempt to survive all the way to the end of a film.
The Cthulhu Files: Go irrevocably insane as you uncover secrets man was not meant to know.
Neither Super, Nor Heroic: Play the caped crusaders that got left out of the comic books.
Space Interns: The Explore Corporation wishes you luck on your alien diplomatic mission and reminds you not to damage your red jumpsuit.
Regency Ladies, The Roleplaying Game: Fall in love! Made snide remarks at balls! Refuse proposals! Throw your money around!
Apotheosis Drive X
I find the overlapping of messaging terms between games, software, and other media to be both befuddling and interesting. The former due to not always being sure what you’ve got is the “right” version, and interesting because of the chance to present advances and upgrades without necessarily going to an all-new version.
This iteration of the Fate-driven mecha game seems to be their ultimate upgrade version.
This product is the same book as Apotheosis Drive X, SD Mix. However, it has an additional 20 pages of content. This includes a guide for hacking the game, an example hack inspired by Pacific Rim, rules for psionic powers in #ADX, and some reference charts and tables in the back of the book. This is the “premium” version of #ADX.
Apotheosis Drive X, #ADX, is a Fate-powered mecha RPG. Think Gundam, Evangelion, Xenogears, and Pacific Rim meets Fate.
“In 2433, we understand everything but human nature.
We fight with Titans, giant monsters of steel, blasting nuclear plasma across the cosmos to resolve our conflicts. But the truth is, we’re resolving nothing. We’re escalating.
As technology speeds forward, we approach apotheosis. We approach a moment where we redefine what it means to be human.
We’re redefining humanity through the auspices of our weapons. We’re embracing destruction. We now have to ask ourselves, why should humanity be saved?”
Apotheosis Drive X is a humanist mecha RPG, powered by Evil Hat Productions’s Fate Core engine. This book is a completely self-contained game. You just need four Fate Dice to play.
Arabian Fortress
DramaScape continues to pour out so many quality figure-scale maps for your game table, and this one has a special theme and flavor to it. It’s so huge, they had to go with a different scale to make it usable on the game table.
Arabian Fortress
DramaScape Fantasy Volume 55
This Product is a 60 x 40 inch, full color battlemap of an Arabian Fortress.
The Product comes with the Square, Hex and No Overlay versions and the Virtual Tabletop Maps (VTT) and include a 360 degree view of the inside of the Arabian Fortress.
This is a very large map and is at a scale of 10ft per inch to enable it to fit into a usable size.
“If we can break into the Arabian Fortress, we can steal their most precious artifacts, the Lamps of the North, West, South, and East Winds!”—Salim Dakin, Arabian Thief
Darkest Tides
Today’s Pick marks another Shaintar release, this one not from Evil Beagle Games, but from our friends at Melior Via, the publisher of the Accursed setting for Savage Worlds. In fact, it’s a crossover adventure between the two settings, Morden (the Accursed lands) and Shaintar!
The adventure begins in earnest when the heroes arrive at Cata’Lasis or Respite—places that conceal a connection between worlds. Ranking members of the heroes’ organization have sent the characters to the island in response to a request for aid. The aid requests are in response to numerous sightings of unusual creatures that have taken place in the area. Tracking the corrupted beings uncovers a larger tunnel complex. Examination of the caverns reveals that they are the remains of something ancient.
Darkest Tides is a full length adventure for a band of Rangers from Shaintar. It can also be adapted for Witchmarked heroes from Accursed. The adventure may be played as a standalone, or it may integrated into a larger campaign. It follows a four act structure, while also providing details on the regions of Cata’Lasis in Shaintar and the corresponding city of Respite on Morden from Accursed. Darkest Tides includes necessary game mechanics and opportunity for tasks that can be resolved in a variety of ways. Conversion notes are provided for transferring characters between the two settings.
Shaintar: Legends Arise and Accursed provides additional details about the setting used in this scenario, however, only Shaintar: Legends Arise is required to fully make use of the game mechanics presented. Savage Worlds is also required.
~~~
On top of all this, I also managed to get in a Kickstarter Roundup this week, so you'll want to check that out.
Tonight, a dear friend - Kim Meyers - is trying her hand at Game Mastering for the first time, running a Savage Supers game in which we are all high school kids developing powers. Tomorrow, I (along with Shawn Gore and David Forby) am running Shaintar at the local Conclave of Gamers event.
What are you up to this weekend? Always remember...
... The Adventure Continues!
~SPF
Wicked Lies and Alibis
Have you ever wanted to play in a game that features a room full of suspects and a Great Detective saying “Before this night is over, I will reveal how one of you committed the murder”? Wicked Lies and Alibis one looks like a fantastic approach to this special genre of detective fiction, one that’s a great deal of fun for the players and GM alike.
Players generate characters at the table from a selection of cards, developing a cast of complex characters who all have a motive to kill the victim. They then play through several establishing scenes in the lead-up to a murder. The remainder of the game is played as a series of structured flashback rounds where each player, in turn, assumes a degree of narrative control to frame a flashback which incriminates another character.
The Game Master has a dual role, both as facilitator of scenes, and as the Great Detective, a Non-Player Character summoned to solve the murder, who summarises the evidence revealed by the characters, and reveal the motives of the characters one-by-one before finally disclosing the identity of the murderer.
This game allows you to recreate murder mystery stories in the finest tradition of the golden-age of detective fiction. It’s also a perfect low-prep, one-shot, filler for that session where you are missing a key player, or when you want to try something different between regular games.
Goblin Quest
OK, this just looks like a damn hoot-and-a-half! Somebody should run this, but not me – I wanna play! Many fun Friday nights of laughing are embedded in this thing. It’s the added rules hacks that really got my attention.
Goblin Quest is a tabletop roleplaying game about slapstick violence, fatal ineptitude, and the greatest adventure of your life.. Play five goblins each (in sequence, not parallel) and watch them meet hilarious ends while failing to achieve the most basic tasks. Will they survive the dangerous world of the Great Battle Camp and avoid the attentions of brutal orcs, murderous bugbears, mean-spirited hobgoblins and scary wizards? Probably not. But you’ll have fun finding out!
The 132-page book is packed with full-colour art from “Calamity” Jon Morris, Iguanamouth and Tim Wilkinson Lewis, and has loads of ideas for great adventures from the leading lights of the game design world such as James Wallis, Ken Hite, Rob Heinsoo, Naomi Alderman, Merritt Kopas, and more.
This edition also contains illustrated rules-hacks to let you play the game in different settings, which are:
Kobold Quest: Create a machine that will please the Mighty Dragon King.
My Name Is Inigo Montoya Jr: They killed your father – prepare to die!
Sean Bean Quest: Play five Sean Beans (in sequence, not in parallel) and attempt to survive all the way to the end of a film.
The Cthulhu Files: Go irrevocably insane as you uncover secrets man was not meant to know.
Neither Super, Nor Heroic: Play the caped crusaders that got left out of the comic books.
Space Interns: The Explore Corporation wishes you luck on your alien diplomatic mission and reminds you not to damage your red jumpsuit.
Regency Ladies, The Roleplaying Game: Fall in love! Made snide remarks at balls! Refuse proposals! Throw your money around!
Apotheosis Drive X
I find the overlapping of messaging terms between games, software, and other media to be both befuddling and interesting. The former due to not always being sure what you’ve got is the “right” version, and interesting because of the chance to present advances and upgrades without necessarily going to an all-new version.
This iteration of the Fate-driven mecha game seems to be their ultimate upgrade version.
This product is the same book as Apotheosis Drive X, SD Mix. However, it has an additional 20 pages of content. This includes a guide for hacking the game, an example hack inspired by Pacific Rim, rules for psionic powers in #ADX, and some reference charts and tables in the back of the book. This is the “premium” version of #ADX.
Apotheosis Drive X, #ADX, is a Fate-powered mecha RPG. Think Gundam, Evangelion, Xenogears, and Pacific Rim meets Fate.
“In 2433, we understand everything but human nature.
We fight with Titans, giant monsters of steel, blasting nuclear plasma across the cosmos to resolve our conflicts. But the truth is, we’re resolving nothing. We’re escalating.
As technology speeds forward, we approach apotheosis. We approach a moment where we redefine what it means to be human.
We’re redefining humanity through the auspices of our weapons. We’re embracing destruction. We now have to ask ourselves, why should humanity be saved?”
Apotheosis Drive X is a humanist mecha RPG, powered by Evil Hat Productions’s Fate Core engine. This book is a completely self-contained game. You just need four Fate Dice to play.
Arabian Fortress
DramaScape continues to pour out so many quality figure-scale maps for your game table, and this one has a special theme and flavor to it. It’s so huge, they had to go with a different scale to make it usable on the game table.
Arabian Fortress
DramaScape Fantasy Volume 55
This Product is a 60 x 40 inch, full color battlemap of an Arabian Fortress.
The Product comes with the Square, Hex and No Overlay versions and the Virtual Tabletop Maps (VTT) and include a 360 degree view of the inside of the Arabian Fortress.
This is a very large map and is at a scale of 10ft per inch to enable it to fit into a usable size.
“If we can break into the Arabian Fortress, we can steal their most precious artifacts, the Lamps of the North, West, South, and East Winds!”—Salim Dakin, Arabian Thief
Darkest Tides
Today’s Pick marks another Shaintar release, this one not from Evil Beagle Games, but from our friends at Melior Via, the publisher of the Accursed setting for Savage Worlds. In fact, it’s a crossover adventure between the two settings, Morden (the Accursed lands) and Shaintar!
The adventure begins in earnest when the heroes arrive at Cata’Lasis or Respite—places that conceal a connection between worlds. Ranking members of the heroes’ organization have sent the characters to the island in response to a request for aid. The aid requests are in response to numerous sightings of unusual creatures that have taken place in the area. Tracking the corrupted beings uncovers a larger tunnel complex. Examination of the caverns reveals that they are the remains of something ancient.
Darkest Tides is a full length adventure for a band of Rangers from Shaintar. It can also be adapted for Witchmarked heroes from Accursed. The adventure may be played as a standalone, or it may integrated into a larger campaign. It follows a four act structure, while also providing details on the regions of Cata’Lasis in Shaintar and the corresponding city of Respite on Morden from Accursed. Darkest Tides includes necessary game mechanics and opportunity for tasks that can be resolved in a variety of ways. Conversion notes are provided for transferring characters between the two settings.
Shaintar: Legends Arise and Accursed provides additional details about the setting used in this scenario, however, only Shaintar: Legends Arise is required to fully make use of the game mechanics presented. Savage Worlds is also required.
~~~
On top of all this, I also managed to get in a Kickstarter Roundup this week, so you'll want to check that out.
Tonight, a dear friend - Kim Meyers - is trying her hand at Game Mastering for the first time, running a Savage Supers game in which we are all high school kids developing powers. Tomorrow, I (along with Shawn Gore and David Forby) am running Shaintar at the local Conclave of Gamers event.
What are you up to this weekend? Always remember...
... The Adventure Continues!
~SPF
