Crothian

One of the things that happens being back in school is looking at things in a different light and seeing things that you learned of in the real world. Okay, maybe it just happens to me I don't know. This all starts with three instances withing the last few days all involving gaming.

The first was I get a board game called Michelangelo. Last fall I took an Art History course that covered many of the pieces used in the game. The second bit was someone on EN World using the Socrates questioning method in a thread though not a very good job of it I'd say. And the third and the one that really got this post going was talk of games that were feminist over on RPG.Net. After taking class on it I would say Blue Rose is the only one I've seen. Many games tone down gender and make it equal but at the same time making it invisible. Gender was always one of the defining characteristics so it needs to be important in the game.

But looking over my classes and the games we have out on the market few of them embrace a higher level of learning. Economics is never shown well if all all. Few games have a real sense of history and culture in them. Geology as are most of the sciences something to be ignored, made up, or just lucked into. Philosophy is one that games tend to have, at least their own philosophy. But none I've seen take up the debates of the or use the arguments of the classic philosophers.

One challenge is that most games tend to throw out what is not going to interact with the PCs. And it goes a step farther because there are players that just won't give a damn even if it does matter to the characters. Babylon 5, the TV show, was ultimately a show about two different philosophies. But it took the show four years to get there and in an RPG you'd have one player who read the book ahead of time and knows what's coming up, two that have forgotten what went on year one two and maybe even three so they don't follow the events that leads up to this, and perhaps you'll have one player that gets it. Perhaps my opinion on players is to low. Perhaps the opinion of the game publishers is too low.

There are games and products that get close. Scion has the potential to really embrace the classics and the mythologies of many different cultures but just doe not go far enough or indepth enough. Space Opera, I think, has hard sciences represented but that might be one of the reasons it never seemed to take of. D&D as produced by Wizards never got close to any of these but some of the third party books tried.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It is not my first post on these type of thing and certainly won't be my last. But I feel the desire for a game that does more then what I am seeing out there. Maybe I'm missing something obvious and perhaps what I think I'm looking for can never exist. But I feel like there should be something more to these game we play.

This was first posted on Livejournal late Saturday since that is were I do my blogging even gameing related. This is an experiment to see if I should cross post blog posts about gaming here.

It needed a nice dramatic title and I think that works.

Today I ran my first 4e one shot and my first 4e game ever. I played once before and that was not that good but I learned some of the things needed to improve the game and was able to fix some of them. Others can be fixed I just didn't this time.

The first was to make it fun. One of the problems with the other 4e experiences I and some of my friends have had was the games were with strangers and people that did not help the game out. For this game everyone basically knew or knew of everyone else. They were all from my extended gaming family. This makes a huge difference in a game, any game. The other general thing I did and again this works for any game is we made it a pot luck lunch. Everyone brought some food and we had some great items to enjoy.

Everyone made characters there and it went mostly smoothy. We did have seven players and that slowed things down some and made the encounters easier then they were. But even with that many characters everyone had something to do each and every round. This is a very good sign for the game.

I used the D&D RPG Starter Set. I bought it specifically for this. We used the full rules of the game and every created characters using just the PHB. I used the starter set more for the dungeon tiles, the chits, and the simple adventure they have in there. We were not going to get through anything big and we didn't even get through the three planned encounters of the starter set.

The players commented on it being a little much with all the marking and keeping track of things. We did not use special token or anything and that would have helped them. I had no issue with it because I was keeping track of everything on a sheet of paper. The players didn't seem to have an issue with their own marks and knowing what they had done and that was really the important part. It was not as important for them to know who the other characters had marked. There was strategy in marking and communicating marks that they didn't do being most people's first real experience.

We ran a little short on time so I didn't have a chance to use the one skill challenge I had planned. A the beginning the players explored a barn first and had I been better with the system I would have come up with a Skill challenge for them there. My DM inexperience with the system was a factor like it would be in any game.

Over all I like the game. It is not better or worse then 3e, it is different. It is more focused on what it does and trying to play a game that goes against that will either end in frustration or a lot of house rules.

The aspect I like least about the game so far is the lack of skill points. I like the condensed number of skills. But I liked the flexibility of skill points and now the only way it seems to get a trained skill is with feats. Feats were always too few in 3e and in 4e making feats also cover improving skills with make it that much worse.

I haven't tried out multi classing yet but it looks like in 4e the developers gave people exactly what they wanted from 3e. In 3e it seemed most multi class was a dip, a level or two in one class but the character would remain focused on the original class. This is what 4e seems to do.

I know some people say it feels like a minis game or a computer game but I didn't see that. The players role played. It was non serous make jokes in the role playing but for a one shot with these people that is to be expected. The game though did not seem to lessen anyone ability to role play it.

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the many many 4e hatred and love fest threads so I'm not sure what people feel are the biggest problems or best areas of the game. I'm curious as to what they are to see if they how they fared in this game.

Desolation

The fantasy market is dominated by high fantasy. There are a few low fantasy options like Warhammer Fantasy but the genre of fantasy has always been dominated by Dungeons and Dragons. With the invention of the Open Game License and then the Oseric movement the gaming community has also been subjected to many clones of Dungeons and Dragons. It is a little refreshing then to read a game that is fresh and not a variation or a fix on the world’s most popular RPG.

Desolation is a new fantasy RPG by Greymalkin Designs. I guess I should really say it is a Post Apocalyptic Fantasy RPG. It comes in a good sized hard bound book that is over two hundred and fifty pages long. The art is pretty good and it is mostly black and white. There are color pages that are the sample characters and pictures of them. For the most part the lay out and look of the books is really good. However, there are stories through out the book that are a page or two in length that have varying fonts and text size in the story. It is a very odd choice and visually unappealing and a little hard to read at times. The eye is drawn to certain sections over others and it just does not look good. That is one of the bigger complaints I have about the book, so while annoying not too bad.

Desolation is a RPG about a fantasy world that got the kicked out of it. The event is called the Night of Fire. Yes, the night burned with firs but a lot of other bad things happened on a global scale. The game is set a short eighteen months later. The characters the players will play will have survived that event. The world is changed and the characters will have to learn how to cope with that. One of the very interesting things the game does is it explains how the world was in nice detail. While it is only a single chapter and map on the inside covers of the book it has the feel of a full campaign world. A book on just the world as it was before would be a fascinating setting filled with adventure and exploration. This is very important as it allows for a great comprehension of what has been lost and destroyed. It showcases what has happened to the great kingdoms and the civilizations that are now lost. There is great contrast between the before times and the way the world is now.

The world as it is now is a very different. One of the great choices the publishers made was to include no maps of what the world looks like. No one knows what it is like. There are stories of coast lines changing, mountains being turned in upon themselves, and even islands being moved some thousands of miles inland. The world looks different but no one has a full understanding of just how different and in what ways it has changed. This will leave a lot of open room in the setting for the GM to set up villages and alter the landscape as he sees fit. There is no official way to in what ways things have changed. There are a few small villages in the book. Each has just a few hundred people and it shows that no large population centers have survived.
The feel of the world is dark. The first story and in fact it is the first thing one will read if they start on page one is dark. It is about a small town barely surviving and what they are doing to survive. It shows at what lengths people will go to to live. There are no enforced laws or conduct. People band together for common protection but it is now an untamed world. The game is about exploration and survival. It can also be about building a place to live and raise a family. There is a lot that needs done to get the setting back to the glory of what it once was. Characters may want to try to do that. They may want to try to find lost friends and family or see what happened to the place they used to live. They may even want to find out what the hell really happened and why.

There is no official answer to that. There are a few hints and clues found around the book but those can be misleading or contradictory. The gnomes of the world knew something was going to happen. They warned people and were ignored or worse over their warnings. Bad things were going on before the Night of Fire. The elves became unwelcome in the forests. As one can tell by the races many of them will be familiar to people. But they all have a little bit of a unique twist the setting brings to them. I am not sure which is better to have races that are way to familiar with to players or to alter the names of them and just have people say that this race is just an elf under a different name. Obviously, they went with using the familiar names and changing things. Some are changed a bit others are changed a lot. Kobolds for instance are arctic dwellers and thrive in the cold.

Players will have a wide variety of options. This is a point based game so no classes or levels. There are eight playable character races. One of the nice things is that there is information on how to play the races and also how to play characters based on where they are from. The game uses the Ubiquity rules system that was first introduced to people in the game Hollow Earth Expedition. In that game of pulp adventurers the system works very well. I am a little unsure how well it will translate to the dark fantasy genre. It does add to the system with some very interesting magic rules.

Magic of Desolation is broken and untrustworthy. Many people fear magic now and blame the castors for somehow causing the Night of Fire. Most places will just kill anyone they think can do magic so even before one sees how the mechanics of magic work they can see it is a dangerous skill to possess. Magic is a trait one has to take as a starting character. Different races can only learn certain types of magic with humans having the most magical options. If a human uses both his traits to select magic he can learn from two different areas. Magic is free form. There are all sorts of guidelines and sample spells to help the players and GM determine the strength and difficulty of the spells. It will still require someone who is comfortable dealing with spells on the fly and has the trust of his players to make the system work. Each spell has a difficulty and for easy spells a caster can choose to roll less dice. The advantage to doing so is that each die of this die pool system that comes up a failure does damage to the castor. Each success over the ones needed to cast the spell can be used to refine the spell in some ways or to reduce the damage the castor takes. I like the magic system and think once people get used to it and get to a comfortable place in the learning curve it will work well. Until then it is probably the place most likely to cause frustration and slow down the game.

Desolation is a solid game with a good theme that goes through it. It is a darker fantasy setting but no one without hope or possibilities. The worst thing most people can imagine has already happened and now it is time to pick up the pieces and start to rebuild and explore the new world.

Pirates Guide to Freeport

It is rare to see a setting get reinvented by throwing the rules out. Most settings seem to be defined by the rules and the exceptions to them they demand. And then to just release the setting with no rules attached at all is not something commonly seen in the gaming industry. Not many companies can really do this and expect success.

Pirates Guide to Freeport is the latest installation of the setting. It has come a long ways since Death in Freeport a module released at the same time as the 3e Players Handbook. The full city did not get a book till 2002 and the Pirates Guide is the twelfth book in the series not counting a few odds and ends done by other publishers. I was prepared to do the research to include a bit of the settings history in the review but lucky for me a two page Publishing History is included in the book.

Freeport is a city founded and used by pirates. It has a good history in the first chapter. The time line of Pirates Guide to Freeport assumes that the modules have already happened. There are spoilers for some of the bigger events that happened in some of the modules in the history. The history of the city is bloody and filled with conflict and intrigue. But it really shows how a pirate city survives and manages to not get destroyed by the many external and internal forces that want it.

The book is mostly black and white. The second chapter though is done in color. In it some of the cover pictures from other books are included and it is nice to see them here. There is plenty of original art work in the book. The mix of color and black and white looks good here. Freeport is not a city of vibrant colors so contrast between the sections is not as apparent as other books I have seen this in. The lay out and cartography are of a similar high standard Green Ronin has had in many of their products. The color map on the inside covers would make a great poster map. Hopefully, one will eventually be released.

The feel of the setting is a good mix of dirty and gritty Pirates with a bit of horror here and there. The city is a functioning city with honest people and businesses. The underlying villainy of it all though is not even attempted to be hidden. The place is a free haven for pirates and criminals. They try to follow the pirate’s code in the city. That is none of the different factions attack each other. There is a Captain’s Council and Sea Lord that serve as the heads of the city. But the city watch is there to protect the city a little more then its citizens. They are not always going to take an interest in every little or kind of big crime that goes on. It is one of the reasons even before Green Ronin got the license that Freeport reminded me of Sanctuary.

The city does have one item though that I think pulls it out of the grim and gritty feeling it does a great job of projecting. It is mentioned on a sidebar and it is easy to ignore. The city is protected by magical siege cannons. It explains how they got them and that is a big mystery of its own. They were recovered from some inner planar ship is what is thought. It takes the souls of three people to fire the things and that is not commonly known. A single shot from one cannon can destroy a full sized ship. It is one element but the piece in the book I found to be the least fitting for the setting.

The city is divided into different districts and each one gets its own chapter. A few key places are defined in each district and some of the chapters have very nicely written up ghost stories for them. Each chapter is well written and easy to locate things in. A great care has been giving to make each section feel unique and really makes each district feel like its own smaller city within the Freeport.

There is a chapter on the Denizens of Freeport. It is a place to find the key NPCs of the city. I love this chapter. It is great to see a chapter of people and not have to read through stat blocks. It does not matter what the game is having no stat blocks is just nice. Each NPC has a well done background, appearance, personality, secrets and goals, and adventure hooks for them. It is a place filled with ideas and when looking for a simple adventure idea there are many to choose from here.

Freeport is mostly designed to be placed into an existing fantasy setting. There is information on how to do that. There is also some basic information for its own fantasy setting if one does not already have one in mind. A near by continent is mapped out and the countries are described in short yet informative section.

Freeport is known as the City of Adventure and this book really shows why that is. The book is not just useful for the City of Freeport though. Anyone running an urban fantasy game can find some good ideas for characters and places in this book. It is very easy to use this book piecemeal like that taking only the best from each section one likes. With a little work it will work in other genres as well.

Freeport has been one of the most popular new settings since it came out. This book opens the setting up for people that were not fans of the D&D game. I really like how they did this book without stats or rules. It is easier to read without the interference of rules.

Og Unearthed Edition

I have never had a chance to read or play the original edition. But I had a friend who always talked about and who told me to look out for it at conventions. When I saw that there was a new version of the game last Gen Con I had to pick it up and I was very glad that I did. Og is the rare game that is so simple to be near brilliant. I have had a lot of fun playing and running one shots with it though I am not completely sold on it for a continuous campaign. Og though is the funniest game I have read and played in the past few years.

This is a new version of Og put out by Firefly Games. It is written by Robin Laws who did a great job of capturing the comical nature of cavemen. The book is small in both size and length. It is less then fifty pages long and is printed in soft bound a little bigger then most novels, I wonder if they looked into getting it printed on stone tablets?

Og is a simple game with a simple premise. The players play cavemen and deal with things like dinosaurs, other cavemen, weather issues, geography, and all the lovely things that made life suck in the stone age; both the real and imagined one. It is not a realistic game nor is it meant to be. It is a bit silly at times and has a great sense of comedy about it. I think it makes for a better one shot then a long campaign. It supports a longer game then a one shot and I impressed it does that. They have some good ideas for it but I am not sure it is enough.

The game play uses a d6. There are no attributes and the game is more randomly generated and has no point buy options. But it is very simple so there are not issues with min maxing that I have seen. There are seven character classes and each is very basic. Strong deals more damage while Banging is better at attacking. There is Eloquent that knows more words and Learned that know more skills. There is also Fast (harder to be hit), Tough (more hit points), and Grunting. Grunting is the closest this game gets to spell casting. The Grunting character tries to make things happen by grunting and gesticulating wildly. Maybe something will happen, but more then likely nothing will. But it is fun to watch the players try.

There are twenty skills in the game. Instead of picking the few skills one knows during character creation players are allowed to pick skills during the adventure. But one only ever will know three skills and once one is picked the character is stuck with it. The Learned character knows six skills. All characters automatically know how to run away. Some classes are better at certain skills then others. The Fast class is a bit better at Running away, the Tough class is better at Resistance. A skill can be used if one has it or not. Having the skill increases the odds of being successful with it.

The brilliant part of the game and the hardest part I have found is that the game limits the words players are allowed to use. There are eighteen words that are possible. But characters only know a d6+2 words. Eloquent either know d6+4 or two more then the character that knows the most; which ever number is higher. It can be tough to do. When I have ran and played the game communication was tough. Some players will really get into the character this way and enjoy the hand motions that go along with communicating knowing just five words. Other players I have noticed do not do well and really do not want to try to keep to only a few words. The only other way of communicating is with the draw skill. Players are encouraged to use a stick and a sand pit to draw it if they have the skill. I have yet to game any place with a sand pit so we have used the other option. Characters that have the draw skill have their players draw with their off hand and holding the writing instrument crudely clasped.

The game can get a little stale with the few options and few words characters have. After each session or adventure or when ever the GM feels like it I guess the player characters can discover a new word. This can be one of the eighteen or something completely new. Words are better then currency in OG especially since there is no currency in the game. What word is learned is best left up to the players to decide what one word really showcases the adventure or session they have just had. Our first word was hive as in the thing my Banging Caveman hit with a stick. It was a painful lesson that he was not able to learn from.

The other option is to add in things to do in combat. Thumping on ones chest can hopefully draw the saber tooth tiger to eat you instead of the injured member of your tribe. Characters can disarm, lure, distract, grab, and other things as well. The rules are simple and add a few important options to keep the game from being too repetitive. Character can die in the game and there is no coming back from death in this game. However, character creation is so fast that five minutes later or sooner the player should be able to introduce a new character. It is not important what the new character was doing before or how he or she got there. Such considerations are really not the types of things this game cares about.

Og is a simple and funny game. I know I have failed to showcase the funny but I am not sure how to with out just quoting the text and that is not exciting. It is a simple game and a cheap game. I like that combination. It took only a few minutes to explain things to the players and the rules really help players get into character much better then most other RPG rules. I really like the game for one shots but for prolonged games it just has not been what we look for in a game. This is a great game and very funny and one that I carry around at cons as it makes a fun and easy pick up game.