Category: RPG

While I haven’t played D&D for decades (pathfinder, well, a year or so ago), I still follow the unfolding drama of 3rd to Pathfinder to 4th to ??? from time to time and came across this:

http://kingsminis.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-i-would-save-dnd-license-brain-dump.html

Since I haven’t played D&D for a long long time, I’m not even sure what people that play it want to get out of it, and especially if my demographic is even relevant at all to the brand.  Certainly there is a faction of players my age that have gone directly back to the Basic/Expert set (really the first really viable ruleset for the game) or enhanced this with subsequent publications to keep it a ‘living’ game (i.e. Labyrinth Lord,  or Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc), and there’s a faction of players that have gone off to the more WOW-like 4th edition– and the rest who have abandoned the dungeon crawlers to get to the more narrative RPG’s (let’s face it, hacking through 66 Gnolls when not in a computer game is pretty bloody tedious for those over the age of 13) if we play at all.

 

Very strange thing to do– signing up for a the beta of a PnP RPG– but here we are.  D&D 5 is doing it, and it probably would have helped a lot to have Exalted open tested a bit more than it was back in the day to avoid the 2/7 filter (ideally including John Chung).  This is really a test of Fate Core 3 and how well it does the overpowered, and here’s what I’m hoping it does:

• Coalescing of the good stuff from the various Fate builds around – this is almost a given to happen
• The Marvel Superheroes pass-the-hat iniative system – this is just too brilliant NOT to include in FATE core.
• Lots of stuff from ‘Strange’ FATE– Power Tiers, the replacing of a FUDGE die with a D6 based on Tier difference, and building special skills and super powers out of skill Trappings– but of course, less complicated than Kerberos club SEEMS to be.   It’s tough to get your head around some of the ways you use your powers– but the interaction potential is amazing (Take the concept of a conflict between NPC’s Stony Joe vs the One Man Army for example).
• Streamlined rule presentation – like the excellent Bulldogs rulebook– this really boils FATE down in an easy to understand and execute way.  It just would not do supers very well (but wasn’t meant to)
• Better stuff with Mooks/Extras/Minions.
• Fewer Aspects per character/NPC. Aspects are a core piece of FATE, but most of the versions have 10 aspects per character–that’s a LOT of aspects for the GM to remember and invoke and compel. I think 5-7 is a fine number. Tying them to skills is a little boring but works for a few here and there.  With environmental aspects on top of the character ones, it gets a bit crazy.

Anyway, if they have another round of beta action, it should be in the next month or so.

This is an odd one, but looks promising. The creator of Hunters and Hunters 2 is taking a crack and the seminal Games Workshop dungeon delver: Warhammer Quest. While I never got into this when it was out, I heard good things, so if they can pull it off, it should be solid stuff.

In terms of the board games, I infinitely prefer the dungeon crawlers like Descent or Advanced Heroquest where the game master is actively trying to KILL OFF the other players as it turns what really could be just D&D into a solid set of boardgame dynamics. Warhammer Quest, as I understand it, was not a game where the GM was trying to take out the players, but more of a traditional Dungeon Master role.

As for the idevice games, there are few and far between that are actually good– the system being absolutely swamped with the free-to-play/buy-my-stupid-in-game-shit games. There are a few gems that I consistently play: Tigris and Euphrates is pure gold and I am still trying to win Elder Sign with any frequency. I picked up La Havre, and while a great board game, on the iphone, the screen is far to small for the game to be playable.

Not that this happens often, but there has been some actual pen and paper RPG that has dropped this year: couple Dresden Files games and one abortive session of Bulldogs! with tabletop forge using Google Hangouts.  While the session was taking the piss due to it being just character creation, the tool proved to be pretty great and now they have a kickstarter (like everyone else) to make it better and better.  I threw 35$ in because even that one night was worth it.

Secondly, alright! finally something good coming out of the old school D&D craze.  This was released in 2011 as a boxed set.  That’s right, a BOXED SET.  Champions!

And speaking of D&D, that died the day 4th edition came out because the designers couldn’t stop for more than 10 minutes from playing WOW, 5th edition (the community edition) is still in the works and it looks um…yeah….they’re still playing WOW.