The Kazan Gambit - Russian Roulette

[Messageboard Golem]

The second Judge Dredd scenario in the Kazan Gambit trilogy from Mongoose Publishing continues the story of the greatest threat Mega-City One has seen in many years, as judges continue to track down evil Sov-block agents before they bring the Justice Department to its knees. Complete with all new rules, Russian Roulette not only provides several gaming sessions of exciting adventure, but also forms a vital part of the growing Judge Dredd roleplaying game.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Russian Roulette is the second part in the Kazan Gambit adventure trilogy for the Judge Dredd RPG from Mongoose Publishing. Russian Roulette is designed for four to six 3rd to 5th level judges.

Russian Roulette is a 32-page adventure coming in at $9.95. Font and margins are average. There are small amounts of white space but both inside covers are used (OGL and ad). The internal mono art is poor to average, and also uses several excerpts from the comics. The basic maps are shown with no scale or direction. Writing style is straightforward with few frills, and editing seems good.

The adventure follows on from the previously released Sleeping Kin adventure, where East-Meg One sleeper agents are woken in Mega-City One after a 20-year hibernation, and rain death and destruction on an Apocalypse Day Parade. The Judges discover that there are more sleeper agents remaining in Mega-City One.

Russian Roulette starts up some weeks later. Tension is growing between the Sov community (who see the sleeper agents as heroes) and operatives of the racist organisation Mega-Front. After a number of crimes from Sov immigrants, the Justice Department moves them all wholesale to an abandoned factory to contain any further criminal activity. The Sov community continues to be hassled by the racists, who seem to be based in a nearby block. The Judges can investigate the racist activity further or remain to guard the Sov community in the abandoned factory. A number of criminal activities are going on in the area, and a variety of encounters can be thrown at the judges if they enter the block with the racists. Meanwhile, at the abandoned factory, an acid gas cannister has released its contents from inside the factory to kill the entire Sov community. The Judges track down the gas cannisters to possible ownership by a city defence group who are currently on manoeuvres in City Bottom.

The Judges must enter the area below the city to track down the suspects. After an encounter in an illegal danger leap arena with the City Defence Unit and a rogue sleeper agent, they discover that the City Defence Unit is working under the direction of the microchip avatar of an East Meg bureaucrat, who seeks to stop the sleeper agents for his own reasons.

As Mega-City One goes on red alert, the Judges must search for the remaining sleeper agents. One of the sleeper agents steals an astro-liner and crashes it into a communications station in space. He infiltrates the station's communications centre and sends a signal to launch nuclear weapons against Mega-City One. The Judges must use a limpet pod to get into the hijacked astro-liner and track down the agent in the wrecked communications station.

Conclusion:
Though the adventure is well designed, with a mix of roleplaying, combat, and investigation, the actual events of the adventure are, on the whole, too railroaded for my liking. The Judges can do nothing about the release of the gas cannister, the hijacking of the astro-liner, or the sending of the code to set off the nuclear weapons. They play only a minor role in a plot that will forge ahead relentlessly, regardless of their actions.

Obviously, the adventure is only likely to appeal to those who are running the rest of the trilogy.

 

[GameWyrd]

Russian Roulette is the second of the three-part Kazan Gambit scenario set for Judge Dredd. As with the first book it’s 32 pages long and comes it at just under $10. You do really need to have read the first in the series, The Sleeping Kin, to get the most from Russian Roulette. If you’re the sort of GM who can take either a scalpel or axe to a pre-written adventure then I think you’ll be able to get juicy bits from Russian Roulette but to run it as-is you’ll need to plug into prequel.

This review will contain spoilers.

Previously the characters have discovered that East-Meg / Russian / Soviet agents have become active again in Mega-City One and are busy following out orders for a war which finished ages ago. The local "Sov" immigrant population are both restless and perhaps riddled with these re-actived sleeper agents. A Sector Chief Judge decides the best thing to do is move the entire community to an abandoned factory. Huh? If you’re not familiar with the Judge Dredd setting then that’ll sound weird to you and you should expect it to sound as an utterly weird idea to your players as well. It’s typically 2000AD though. The Judges are basically fascist. The fascist image will be reinforced because once they’re inside the factory (but after the player characters have moved off an other job) the whole lot of them will be gassed to death. This wasn’t according to the Sector Chief’s plan but is a direct result of a corrupt Judge and a City-Def unit. Um. It doesn’t make the Judges look so clever. One of the East-Meg ancients manages to escape Mega-City one, being chased by the players but despite their best efforts manages to transmit the launch codes required to shower Mega-City One with a hail of nukes. Whoops. Does he? This is a pretty big issue to take out of the players’ hands, especially if they’re actively engaged in trying to stop it.

The first scene deals with the characters getting involved in a scene that quickly becomes an attempted robbery. You can’t but not the bad timing of the would-be robbers as they wait until there are four Judges hanging around before springing into action. This encounter can drag out into quite a complex bit of hostage taking if the characters don’t get to grips with things but all the game mechanics for things like ricochet shots are safely ensconced in the text. There’s links here to be made to the previous goings on in The Sleeping Kin if the players make them – but it’s not that important.

The next two scenes deal with moving the Sovs into their new home; whether they like it or not. It can get quite messy here, if the Judges choose to fight their way through then lots of d20s will bounce on the table but the Sovs won’t have much of a chance. Scene four is all about how the Sovs react to their new home – they don’t like it. The GM will have to decide just how the characters discover that racists from the neighbouring block have already been hassling the immigrants. There’s a bit of a weak link here. If the players decide to actually check the factory before shoving an entire population into it then you’ll also have to decide whether or not they’ll find all the gas too.

Scene five deals with the Judges moving through an entire tower. This is way more interesting that dealing with the Sovs. There’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on here; cyborgs, dangerous toys, lemon-like aliens with teeth and others. I think you’ll be able to use the events in the David Duke Block in any Judge Dredd game. Of course, in the version that holds strictly true here at the top of the Duke David Block is the corrupt Judge Trebell. A corrupt Judge could be a major crisis of confidence for the players. As it is, I think either the opening speech from Trebell will convince the players that he’s right and the Sovs aren’t true Mega-Citters and therefore not worth the bother or he’ll just pull his Lawmaster, start blasting and thus flick at least one of your players into kill mode.

Scene 6 can be tricky. This is where the PC Judges will come back to the old factory where they’ve moved the Sov immigrants to and find them all dead. If the Judges never go and investigate the problems in the neighbouring tower block and have been standing guard over the place then there are some suggestions on how to lure them away. The scene is written so that the Sovs are all melted by the acid gas one way or another. It seems an unnecessary bit of railroading to me. The plot works just as well if the Judges find the acid gas canisters before they go off and they save the citizens. There’s a bit of investigation next and it’ll turn up lots of dead ends. Thankfully the setting is kind to situations like this is and if the players don’t manage to get the investigation going on the right lines then an NPC can hit on the next clue. It’ll be tricky though because a corrupt division of the City-Def force was responsible for the mass-murder.

All this is just the first of three "Progs", each Prog is composed of a similar number of scenes. The following scenes are a little less detailed than these ones but there’s an awful lot of action packed into the 32 pages of Russian Roulette.

The second prog in its various scenes will deal with the Judges running around City Bottom as they hunt down the rogue Citi-Def squad. One of the best things in the previous adventure The Sleeping Kin was the way it in which it helped show case the scope of Mega-City One and this time round it’s Russian Roulette proving how wonderful the setting is. The City Bottom is best described as an urban dungeon. The place is a maze of passageways and corridors filled with mutants, monsters and all sorts of robotic nasties.

In a latter scene in the second Prog the judges will come across a Danger Leap Arena. A Danger Leap is one of those weird and deadly sports that are illegal in the dark future of 2000AD. If you can imagine people leaping over a great big pit – just to prove that they can – then you’ve got the basics of the Danger Leap.

The final prog of four scenes will see the Judges up in space. The synopsis at the start of the book had be really worried about this prog – it sounded as if that no matter how hard the players tried or the players did that they’d be outwitted by the East-Meg agent. In fact, the adventures in space are better than that. Yet again the space setting might be a brand new feature for the players and continues the Kazan Gambit’s good record for getting the most out of the setting. As it happens the East-Meg agent will have the launch codes sent despite what the players do but it’s not because the PC Judges failed to stop him. The players can bring down the Sleeper Agent if they’re good enough and its tempting to change things slightly so that the agent had a second mission just so there can be some small victory for the players at the end of the scenario if they do manage to defeat him in combat. The nuclear missiles end the book, behind the scenes of the scenario the agent has already beaten the Justice Department’s computer systems and transmitted the code.

Russian Roulette doesn’t hang together as nicely as the Sleeping Kin does and perhaps more worrying it railroads the players rather more. On the other hand it manages to pack an awful lot into just 32 paged, giving the impression of a much larger book. The division of book into three programs with six, four and four scenes each means it’ll also be possible to squeeze in encounters between each program and turn the scenario into something near campaign size. It ends on a cliff-hanger though and that’s always risky. You might well want to wait for the final book in the series before starting this one.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[skalvar]

((Disclaimer - I have done and continue to do freelance work for Mongoose Publishing))

Summary: A reasonable attempt to create a complex adventure. It leads the players though a variety of complex scenarios without allowing them free will or even the illusion of choice. Like its predecessor "The Sleeping Kin" this module works better as an example of the kinds of challenges a street judge might face than as a an adventure.

As presented
The second adventure book in the Kazan Gambit Trilogy, "Russian Roulette" follows close on the heels of "The Sleeping Kin". During a routine robbery the players stumble into a charged ethnic conflict between Sov immigrants and one of the Sector 190 Citi-Def units. The titular Kazan clones work behind the scenes to bring this conflict out into the open, eventually resulting in the players failing to stop the launch of a host of atomic weapons at the well defended Mega-City One.

Like its predecessor, "Russion Roulette" relies on a highly scripted style. The Progs are at best minimally connected using very rigid NPC interactions to drive them. Within each Prog some of the scenes allow for freedom of choice, while others force the players down a straight and narrow path. GMs whose players display even an ounce of free will may have trouble progressing the game from scene to scene. That being said, in the second Prog the writers do detail a possible juncture where the players may choose to defend the immigrants or seek out the source of their troubles. Both end essentially the say way, but the effort to acknowledge and rectify the fundamental shortcoming shows some effort towards more freedom of action.

Section Score: 3 (Average)

As setting introduction
Again like its predecessor, "Russian Roulette" does an excellent job of showing new and interesting things for judges to do during the day. It covers things like ethnic prejudice, block wars, crazes, and even guard duty. Any of the activities outlined within the scope of the adventure would make excellent adventure seeds for a regular evening of Judge Dredd gaming.

The presence of the senior judges in this module seems somewhat less intrusive than in "The Sleeping Kin". The players spend long stretches of time out from under the thumb of the command structure.

The introduction and use of a "death leap" arena deserves particular praise. It demonstrates a persuasive, interesting way to introduce a craze as a setting and plot element. By first encountering an enthusiast and then engaging in the arena players get a chance to explore Mega-City One along with their judges.

Section Score: 4 (Good)

Use of setting mechanics/archetypes
"Russian Roulette" makes ample use of the XP as reward/punishment system proposed in the JD core book. It makes less use of the backup and arrest mechanics, owing in part to the combat oriented nature of the presented material.

The scenario as presented does not make any real attempt to stretch the judge archetype. Players can blast, bark, and intimidate though the adventure with few consequences. This is a marked contrast with "The Sleeping Kin" which forces the judges to think outside of the regular helmet-head mentality.

Section Score: 3 (Average)

Ability to modify/adapt adventure to target campaign
The module can be easily deconstructed for use in an existing campaign. The Kazan clones play an important role in Prog 3 but the GM can easily replace them with an existing campaign villain. The "guard the undesirables" and "search for information" plots in Prog 2 stand out as excellent models for common activities, as well as being easily adaptable in and of themselves.

Section Score: 5 (Excellent)

Conclusion
As written "Russian Roulette" represents a conundrum. Taken individually the scenes and Progs work well. Unfortunately the connective tissue that links them together reduces the players too little more than puppets in the irno fist of fate. As a source book it ranks highly, but as an adventure it falls back into the pack. My overall rating of 3 reflects my opinion of the adventure, although I would give it a high 4 as a supplement.

Overall Score: 3