Weapons of the Gods

[Bront]

I picked up the Weapons of the Gods book (well, PDF, book is coming) at Gen Con, and it's quite nice looking, and seems to be a good base for a much more mystical martial arts campaign. I'm looking forward to getting the actual book in my hands, which I find is much easier to sit down and read.

Anyone else had the chance to look through it? Any impressions? Any questions for those looking at it as a potential purchase?

 

[D_Sinclair]

I bought Weapons of the Gods back when it first came out, since I've long been a fan of those Chinese martial arts comics. The book is very pretty and the setting nicely done, but the mechanics are absolutely horrid, the worst effort I've seen to date to make a dice pool system seem unique. Roll a fistful of dice, then group them up into a list of results based on matching dies... Roll a fistful of dice, get 3, 7, 7, 7, 9 and 9, and your list of results turns out to be 13 (one 3), 29 (two 9's), and 37 (three 7's). Then they give all sorts of options for saving results for later use, rerolling the lowest die, etc. Horrible.

So even if they do a game based on Iron Marshal, my favorite of all those chinese martial arts comics, I probably wouldn't buy it if they stick with that horrid system.

 

[Bront]

It played pretty well when I did it at the Con, and actualy seems like a potentialy interesting system with a better curve than the exploding dice system some games have. The river system of holding dice for later looks to be a cool way to allow fighters to pool their power and grow stronger in battle, like many comics and anime series seem to show, so I think it will be a good game for a loose martial arts style game.

I thought the book premiered at Gen Con, so I'm a bit confused when you say "when it first came out".

 

[Corwyn_kop]

I believe he is referring to the comic which inspired the game in question.


Corwyn

 

[Bront]

Ahh, apparently part of the book has been available in PDF as well.

The dice mechanics seem odd, but they work quite well in game once you get used to them, and are fairly easy to impliment.

 

[D_Sinclair]

The first chapter of the book has been available since early April. Hopefully, they'll offer the complete book in PDF format, with an additional discount for those who already bought chapter 1.