If you ask your friends to name five television shows they watch regularly, there’s a better than average chance that at least one of them is some kind of Reality TV show. Last year, Reality TV shows accounted for more than half of all TV watchers viewing time per season – and it was substantially higher in previous years!
Now take this premise: What would Reality TV shows be like in a Modern Fantasy setting?
Goodman Games and author Brendan J. LaSalle think it would be a lot like Maximum Xcrawl. Written for use with Pathfinder RPG, the game recently came through a successful Kickstarter Campaign, and will be hitting shelves in September of this year. Mashing up extreme sports, gladiatorial games, magic and dungeon crawling in one package, this setting and rule expansion sets out to let players experience dungeon crawling in a whole new way… live and in color on national TV as the stars of the show!
Or its next victims…
Maximum Xcrawl (for Pathfinder RPG)
Maximum Xcrawl is a modern high fantasy adventure setting where competitive dungeon-crawling is a televised sport. The game uses a modified version of Pathfinder RPG with additional variant rules and content to adapt it to a modern setting. The book contains all materials needed to create characters, including new classes, feats, and equipment. Maximum Xcrawl also has GM content, including setting information, gods, NPC classes, and new rules to cover Fame and rewards, with additional advice on how to run a campaign.
Production Quality
The production quality of Maximum Xcrawl is pretty good overall, with a decent no-frills layout and some inspired writing by the author. The writing style is enthusiastic and descriptive, and the new concepts and rules are presented quite well to the Reader. The layout is a bit plain in the black-and-white PDF version, however, it’s possible the hardbound version with color might be more pleasing.
The PDF comes with a full table of contents and PDF bookmarks for ease of navigation, along with a three page index at the back for specific page lookups. The content is presented in a way which Pathfinder RPG and d20/OGL gamers can easily recognize and reference. Special rules and comments are placed in shaded and bordered boxes throughout the book, and the reference tables are clean and neat.
The artwork in Maximum Xcrawl is a mixed bag of good and not-so-good illustrations. The drawings are generally inconsistent, with some pieces evocative of old schoool gaming art, while other pieces come off feeling quite novice. Some are over-worked and challenging to discern the action being presented, some are excellently rendered, while still some are under-worked, with simplistic characters floating in space. However, the art-to-page ratio is pretty good, and there are none of those excessive wall-of-text sections which can be so bland to the Reader.
…all in a Pay-per-View Special Event!
Maximums Xcrawl is both a setting for and a variant of the Pathfinder RPG, and as such does require access to at least the Core Rules in order to play the game. However, the author has created new content more appropriate to the Modern Fantasy setting such as classes and feats, so that the game does have a different feel than a standard High Fantasy PFRPG campaign.
The setting itself is modern North America, but reimagined as a fantasy-world empire, where Maximum Xcrawl is the most popular television reality-show on the airwaves. Here human and demi-human adventurers take on specially designed “dungeons” on live TV, and pit their combat skills and magic against very real monsters and death traps. It’s American Gladiator meets The Running Man meets Shadowrun (but without the cyberpunk), all set in a vaguely Roman-esque Empire complete with Olympian gods and magical spells.
Maximum Xcrawl is divided into three major sections – The World of Xcrawl which is generally designed for the players; Gamemastering Xcrawl which is further divided into three sub-sections with GM resources; and finally, Rewards which tackles a very expansive array of tangible and intangible “loots” for the characters to win on the gameshow.
The book opens with an introduction to the Key Elements of the Xcrawl World, which are a short couple of pages to outline the aforementioned tropes for the campaign setting. The North American Empire is both corrupt and powerful, and divided into city-states with a highly stratified social order. Maximum Xcrawl is the ultra-popular “extreme” sport/reality show and is the “circuses” of this Roman-like dominion. Humans, elves, halflings, and other fantasy races inhabit the continent, along with a wide variety of monsters – including dragons – where magic, firearms, and race cars all exist side-by-side. Heroes of the games win not only gold and magic items, but fame, lucrative endorsement contracts, and the chance to be immortalized in a line of action figures. Losers end up simply dead in full color on live TV. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of our own reality-show-ridden social-media-driven world with that of a modern fantasy setting.
The next several sections deal with character creation, and introduce the Xcrawl settings version of Races and Classes, along with Skills, Feats, and Equipment. The Races are standard d20/PFRPG fantasy, but with backstories to explain their existence in a modern fantasy setting. Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, and half-orcs are all possible in the Maximum Xcrawl setting, and the author includes details about each races role in the setting and the games.
While the typical Pathfinder RPG classes are available in Maximum Xcrawl, the author has provided modern fantasy alternate classes which are more in line with the extreme sport that Maximum Xcrawl has become. New classes include the Athlete (ninja-warrior – the TV obstacle-course kind), Blaster (pure damage output warlock), Brawler (bare-knuckle fighters), Jammer (heavy metal-bard), Messenger (god-descended cleric), and Specialist (trap-finding rogue). These new classes are tuned to be more in line with the demands of the Xcrawl games, and have high damage outputs and are less well-rounded than Pathfinder counterparts. But they also have special abilities and powers which make them far more capable of being show-men (and women) dealing with the crowds and the movie-star fame that comes with being in Maximum Xcrawl.
The author created four new Skills for use in Maximum Xcrawl, and repurposed three more to fit the setting. Drive handles the use of modern cars and trucks, First Aid replaces Heal, and Tactics allows characters to identify the tough opponents and leaders on the field. Grandstanding lets characters work the crowd in and out of the Xcrawl, and can have a serious effect on the Fame and wealth of a PC – finally, a real reason not to make Charisma a dump stat! Knowledge, Perform, and Profession skills would also undergo a change from their medieval versions to modern ones, and the author does a good job of retreading those skills.
The Feats are designed to also match the setting and include an array of class-specific ones to match the new classes in Maximum Xcrawl. But there are also Feats which are designed to play into media-hero fan-favorite aspect of the game, and all characters start gaining Fame Feats as they increase in level. The author provides more than a score of these new Feats, which include amusing titles suchs as Bring the Noise, Entourage, and Hottie.
The Equipment in Maximum Xcrawl covers some modern day equitant of medieval weapons (aluminum bat) as well as straight up standard medieval PFRPG weapons. But there are also firearms in the game, specialized arrows, and scopes for bows. Obviosly, the firearms are fairly low caliber, which would make sense in an oppressive Empire – afterall, why let the rabble have bigger guns than the military?
Religion is discussed at some length in this section, and the Roman gods are chosen for this setting, along with a few racial deities thrown in, as well as Amerindian gods. The author develops the deities fairly well here, giving those playing Messenger characters and Clerics something to work with. It is interesting to note that there is a cult of an outlawed One-God, which opens up some unusual roleplay possibilities for some gaming groups.
Finally, a couple new systems are introduced: Mojo and Fame. Mojo represents a group bonus pool which can be used by any member of an adventuring group while inside an Xcrawl game to augment d20 rolls. This represents a team’s ability to cooperate and synergize in unique ways. Fame is an individual point system that is used to represent how recognizable the character has become. The Fame points can be used to set up situations in roleplaying, such as getting free meals, invitations to parties, or even making police look the other way for minor infractions.
The next major section of the book is designed for the GM, and covers a wide range of topics pertaining to running Maximum Xcrawl as a campaign or as just a single night of fun. There is some information about the alternate history of the world, which sadly is one of the weakest parts of the setting. Anyone familiar with history will be cringing at the inadequacies and illogic in it. Most GMs will likely make up their own history, or far better, just accept the setting at face value and not delve too deeply into a past world history that would seem to indicate that the Roman Empire never fell, yet the world turned strangely Anglo-sized and American in its evolution.
There is a section describing the North American Empire and provides maps of the continent and the nature of the various city-states. Several NPC classes are provided here: the American Commoner, American Aristocrat, Professional, Soldier, and a Pro Monster - the latter is a monster who has survived Xcrawls and could become the nemesis of an adventuring group.
The author also has introduced the idea of NPCs who design the dungeons used in the Maximum Xcrawl competition, a DJ or Dungeon Judge. These NPCs give the characters an actual tangible target for their ire, and allow a GM to enter into roleplaying as some dungeon-designing pro or maniac, depending upon the personality. Such an NPC could also become a nemesis for the heroes, and some DJ’s would likely be just as famous as the Xcrawlers for their diabolical dungeon design and trapsmithing.
Finally, the GM section rounds out with a discussion on Fame and loot, as well as other rewards for the characters. Maximum Xcrawl is supposed to be a national pastime, the reality show of reality shows, full of magic, combat, and death on live TV. Advertisers pay lucratively for endorsement deals, fans send in gifts to players, and the game itself offers loot for defeating monsters – loot that also doubles as advertisements , of course. The author provides quite a number of ideas here for how to keep prizes and rewards interesting, and in keeping with a game show where extreme dungeon crawling is both a sport and entertainment.
Overall Score: 6.1 out of 10.0
Conclusions
Maximum Xcrawl is certainly an interesting concept overall, and it really has the opportunity for both deep role-playing campaigns as well as a beer-and-pretzels night of fun as a one-shot. The world of Maximum Xcrawl is a dark mirror of our own, and there are likely to be some GMs who will leverage the most from this setting and rules expansion.
The author really has some great creative ideas here, and presents some interesting rules and content for use in turning PFRPG into a modern fantasy game. But the layout and art were somewhat lackluster, and the historical concepts leading to this modern fantasy world require quite a strain to believe. Taken as a whole, there are some great ideas in here as well as some weaker content, so it’s a mixed bag of sorts, but might well be a good fit for some gaming groups out there.
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in paperback format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
Now take this premise: What would Reality TV shows be like in a Modern Fantasy setting?
Or its next victims…
Maximum Xcrawl (for Pathfinder RPG)
- Designer: Brendan J. LaSalle
- Illustrators: Jeremy Mohler (cover); Tom Galambos, Brad McDevitt, Jesse Mohn, Michael Wilson (interior)
- Publisher: Goodman Games / Pandahead Publishing
- Year: 2014
- Media: PDF (80 pages)
- Price: $39.99 (Available from Goodman Games in Hardbound format – PDF only price not supplied for the review.)
Maximum Xcrawl is a modern high fantasy adventure setting where competitive dungeon-crawling is a televised sport. The game uses a modified version of Pathfinder RPG with additional variant rules and content to adapt it to a modern setting. The book contains all materials needed to create characters, including new classes, feats, and equipment. Maximum Xcrawl also has GM content, including setting information, gods, NPC classes, and new rules to cover Fame and rewards, with additional advice on how to run a campaign.
Production Quality
The production quality of Maximum Xcrawl is pretty good overall, with a decent no-frills layout and some inspired writing by the author. The writing style is enthusiastic and descriptive, and the new concepts and rules are presented quite well to the Reader. The layout is a bit plain in the black-and-white PDF version, however, it’s possible the hardbound version with color might be more pleasing.
The artwork in Maximum Xcrawl is a mixed bag of good and not-so-good illustrations. The drawings are generally inconsistent, with some pieces evocative of old schoool gaming art, while other pieces come off feeling quite novice. Some are over-worked and challenging to discern the action being presented, some are excellently rendered, while still some are under-worked, with simplistic characters floating in space. However, the art-to-page ratio is pretty good, and there are none of those excessive wall-of-text sections which can be so bland to the Reader.
…all in a Pay-per-View Special Event!
Maximums Xcrawl is both a setting for and a variant of the Pathfinder RPG, and as such does require access to at least the Core Rules in order to play the game. However, the author has created new content more appropriate to the Modern Fantasy setting such as classes and feats, so that the game does have a different feel than a standard High Fantasy PFRPG campaign.
The setting itself is modern North America, but reimagined as a fantasy-world empire, where Maximum Xcrawl is the most popular television reality-show on the airwaves. Here human and demi-human adventurers take on specially designed “dungeons” on live TV, and pit their combat skills and magic against very real monsters and death traps. It’s American Gladiator meets The Running Man meets Shadowrun (but without the cyberpunk), all set in a vaguely Roman-esque Empire complete with Olympian gods and magical spells.
Maximum Xcrawl is divided into three major sections – The World of Xcrawl which is generally designed for the players; Gamemastering Xcrawl which is further divided into three sub-sections with GM resources; and finally, Rewards which tackles a very expansive array of tangible and intangible “loots” for the characters to win on the gameshow.
The book opens with an introduction to the Key Elements of the Xcrawl World, which are a short couple of pages to outline the aforementioned tropes for the campaign setting. The North American Empire is both corrupt and powerful, and divided into city-states with a highly stratified social order. Maximum Xcrawl is the ultra-popular “extreme” sport/reality show and is the “circuses” of this Roman-like dominion. Humans, elves, halflings, and other fantasy races inhabit the continent, along with a wide variety of monsters – including dragons – where magic, firearms, and race cars all exist side-by-side. Heroes of the games win not only gold and magic items, but fame, lucrative endorsement contracts, and the chance to be immortalized in a line of action figures. Losers end up simply dead in full color on live TV. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of our own reality-show-ridden social-media-driven world with that of a modern fantasy setting.
The next several sections deal with character creation, and introduce the Xcrawl settings version of Races and Classes, along with Skills, Feats, and Equipment. The Races are standard d20/PFRPG fantasy, but with backstories to explain their existence in a modern fantasy setting. Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, and half-orcs are all possible in the Maximum Xcrawl setting, and the author includes details about each races role in the setting and the games.
While the typical Pathfinder RPG classes are available in Maximum Xcrawl, the author has provided modern fantasy alternate classes which are more in line with the extreme sport that Maximum Xcrawl has become. New classes include the Athlete (ninja-warrior – the TV obstacle-course kind), Blaster (pure damage output warlock), Brawler (bare-knuckle fighters), Jammer (heavy metal-bard), Messenger (god-descended cleric), and Specialist (trap-finding rogue). These new classes are tuned to be more in line with the demands of the Xcrawl games, and have high damage outputs and are less well-rounded than Pathfinder counterparts. But they also have special abilities and powers which make them far more capable of being show-men (and women) dealing with the crowds and the movie-star fame that comes with being in Maximum Xcrawl.
The Feats are designed to also match the setting and include an array of class-specific ones to match the new classes in Maximum Xcrawl. But there are also Feats which are designed to play into media-hero fan-favorite aspect of the game, and all characters start gaining Fame Feats as they increase in level. The author provides more than a score of these new Feats, which include amusing titles suchs as Bring the Noise, Entourage, and Hottie.
The Equipment in Maximum Xcrawl covers some modern day equitant of medieval weapons (aluminum bat) as well as straight up standard medieval PFRPG weapons. But there are also firearms in the game, specialized arrows, and scopes for bows. Obviosly, the firearms are fairly low caliber, which would make sense in an oppressive Empire – afterall, why let the rabble have bigger guns than the military?
Religion is discussed at some length in this section, and the Roman gods are chosen for this setting, along with a few racial deities thrown in, as well as Amerindian gods. The author develops the deities fairly well here, giving those playing Messenger characters and Clerics something to work with. It is interesting to note that there is a cult of an outlawed One-God, which opens up some unusual roleplay possibilities for some gaming groups.
Finally, a couple new systems are introduced: Mojo and Fame. Mojo represents a group bonus pool which can be used by any member of an adventuring group while inside an Xcrawl game to augment d20 rolls. This represents a team’s ability to cooperate and synergize in unique ways. Fame is an individual point system that is used to represent how recognizable the character has become. The Fame points can be used to set up situations in roleplaying, such as getting free meals, invitations to parties, or even making police look the other way for minor infractions.
The next major section of the book is designed for the GM, and covers a wide range of topics pertaining to running Maximum Xcrawl as a campaign or as just a single night of fun. There is some information about the alternate history of the world, which sadly is one of the weakest parts of the setting. Anyone familiar with history will be cringing at the inadequacies and illogic in it. Most GMs will likely make up their own history, or far better, just accept the setting at face value and not delve too deeply into a past world history that would seem to indicate that the Roman Empire never fell, yet the world turned strangely Anglo-sized and American in its evolution.
There is a section describing the North American Empire and provides maps of the continent and the nature of the various city-states. Several NPC classes are provided here: the American Commoner, American Aristocrat, Professional, Soldier, and a Pro Monster - the latter is a monster who has survived Xcrawls and could become the nemesis of an adventuring group.
The author also has introduced the idea of NPCs who design the dungeons used in the Maximum Xcrawl competition, a DJ or Dungeon Judge. These NPCs give the characters an actual tangible target for their ire, and allow a GM to enter into roleplaying as some dungeon-designing pro or maniac, depending upon the personality. Such an NPC could also become a nemesis for the heroes, and some DJ’s would likely be just as famous as the Xcrawlers for their diabolical dungeon design and trapsmithing.
Finally, the GM section rounds out with a discussion on Fame and loot, as well as other rewards for the characters. Maximum Xcrawl is supposed to be a national pastime, the reality show of reality shows, full of magic, combat, and death on live TV. Advertisers pay lucratively for endorsement deals, fans send in gifts to players, and the game itself offers loot for defeating monsters – loot that also doubles as advertisements , of course. The author provides quite a number of ideas here for how to keep prizes and rewards interesting, and in keeping with a game show where extreme dungeon crawling is both a sport and entertainment.
Overall Score: 6.1 out of 10.0
Conclusions
Maximum Xcrawl is certainly an interesting concept overall, and it really has the opportunity for both deep role-playing campaigns as well as a beer-and-pretzels night of fun as a one-shot. The world of Maximum Xcrawl is a dark mirror of our own, and there are likely to be some GMs who will leverage the most from this setting and rules expansion.
The author really has some great creative ideas here, and presents some interesting rules and content for use in turning PFRPG into a modern fantasy game. But the layout and art were somewhat lackluster, and the historical concepts leading to this modern fantasy world require quite a strain to believe. Taken as a whole, there are some great ideas in here as well as some weaker content, so it’s a mixed bag of sorts, but might well be a good fit for some gaming groups out there.
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in paperback format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 5.75
- - Design: 6.5 (Good solid writing; layout was ok but not exceptional)
- - Illustrations: 5.0 (Art was very hit or miss; some good, some bad, some really bad)
- Content: 6.5
- - Crunch: 7.0 (A lot of interesting new mechanics; good fit with PFRPG and the setting)
- - Fluff: 6.0 (Cool ideas for the Xcrawl; some aspects of the setting backdrop come across as flimsy)
- Value: X (Reviewer was not supplied the price point for the PDF)
