Writing and putting together a module is quite an experience. It gave me a great respect for the work that other writers and publishers put into their products. We learned a lot that will make creating our next module much more efficient. I want to thank everyone who helped work on the project. I want to doubly thank any of you who check it out!
It has been a long time since I played a Hero System game. Champions is definitely my favorite role-playing game for a super heroes game. It is a point buy system that is very flexible for character creation. Powers can be customized with different advantages or limitations. While the system has expanded to allow for a number of different settings, super heroes has always been its strength.
So when I was given an opportunity to review the War of Worldcraft module for Hero System, I jumped at the chance. The module is definitely feels like a parody, poking fun at popular online rpgs and their players. I think the module works quite well as a one-shot, although I regret not having the opportunity to try it out before writing this review. I would definitely be interested in running it though, it looks like it would be a fun break between more serious games. The module does include advice for how to integrate into a longer campaign, it would be very easy to introduce the villain a few sessions before.
The super villain Download takes over a popular MMORPG and uses the players to hold its creating company hostage. His plan is to make an army of robots to take over the world. In the course of the adventure the heroes have to fight him at a crowded launch party, track him to his lair, get downloaded into robot bodies, and finally get uploaded into the online game itself. It looks like a wild ride, full of great role-playing opportunities.
One of the things I really like about this module is all the extra plot hooks. There is plenty of advice to gamemasters about events and NPCs to interact with. Each of the characters in the appendix has several plot seeds to add depth to their interaction with the players. There are enough ideas that one could easily expand to make this adventure a greater part of an existing campaign. I also like that it doesn’t assume the players will act in any particular way, and provides several methods for the heroes to resolve the adventure.
If you’ve never played Champions before, this module would be a great introduction. I highly recommend taking a break sometime from your regular game (online or table-top) and give this a try sometime. War of Worldcraft will provide a couple nights of good entertainment. After all, isn’t that what role-playing is all about?
Apathy Rating: 3/5.
Want to learn more about War of Worldcraft? Read on…
I’m a patron for Red Eye of Azathoth, one of the new Open Design projects. While the adventure was originally pitched for the Pathfinder RPG, the current poll (which ends the 23rd) has the Call of Cthulhu BRP system in a fairly commanding lead. This is looking to be the first true CoC patronage project! The only problem is, we need more patrons.
For those of you who haven’t been involved with a patronage project before, they are a unique way of creating adventures. Patrons interested in a specific project contribute money to help it cover production costs. This includes not just the writing, but professional illustration, editing, and layout. Patrons receive a PDF of the final product, with the option to buy print-on-demand versions at printing cost.
But patronage is more than just pre-ordering a limited edition product. It is also an opportunity to affect a number of decisions about how the adventure is made. You can contribute to brainstorming sessions. You also get to see the development process from start to finish. Even if you don’t contribute very much, it is a great experience to watch an adventure be created. If you’ve never been involved in a project like this, I highly recommend giving it a try.
As you can tell, I’m excited about this project. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, but we need patrons to make it happen!
Patronage is nothing new. Merriam Webster defines a patron as one that uses wealth or influence to help an individual, an institution, or a cause. During the Renaissance wealthy individuals would commission an artist to create a specific piece of artwork on contract. Sometimes the patron simply wished to support an artist whose work they enjoyed, and allowed the artist freedom to create what they desired. More often the patron dictated to varying degrees what the final piece should be like. Many important historical pieces of art were created using this system.
So what does that have to do with role-playing games? In 2006 Wolfgang Baur started an experiment called Open Design. He wrote an adventure, later named Steam & Brass, for a group of patrons who collectively commissioned it. These patrons were able to provide feedback and help steer the direction of the project, or they could wait and trust that Wolfgang would produce an excellent adventure. Essentially with the patron system a writer gets to bypass the normal publishing channels and work directly with the customers while the patrons get to see and shape the development of the product from the beginning. Participation in development is optional, but I found it the most valuable part. Not only does it help ensure that the final product turns out in a way that you desire, but it is a great way to learn about the writing and design of modules. At Open Design, no matter what level of involvement you choose each patron receives a PDF of the final product and could have access to a limited number of printed copies. With 7 projects behind him and an 8th, Halls of the Mountain King, currently in progress, something about the patron system must be working.
Why pay money toward something you are going to help contribute to? Certainly that isn’t something everyone is going to be interested in. Just remember, patronage isn’t merely buying a product. Patronage is supporting an artist, and in the case of an RPG, your funds can help pay for artwork, maps, editing, layout, and any other expenses that may occur. This isn’t a large company trying to maximize profit, but an artist that wishes to express their vision and needs a small community of supporters to make it happen.
Coming from an open-source software background I naturally found the idea of community collaboration appetizing. With the success of Open Design, other patron projects were sure to follow. Steve Russell, of Rite Publishing, started his own distinct project, the Rituals of Choice Adventure Path, an entire campaign with 25 individual adventures planned. Only the veryfirst one, A Witch’s Choice, has been released so far. I was fortunate enough to have heard about the project early and became one of the original patrons. Having been involved in the creation of the adventure, I can’t really give a fair review of it. I can, however, give my view into the patronage system from the inside.
During the course of A Witch’s Choice’s development there was an encounter that Steve was not satisfied with. He decided to open it for patrons to pitch a replacement. I decided to give it a shot, so I wrote up an encounter involving a will-o-wisp in a swamp. Before the selection process was finished Steve already had comments on how to improve the encounter and make it fit better within the overall story. When my encounter was selected he was very helpful throughout the process. I found him very easy to work with and particularly good about both giving and receiving constructive criticism.
While the whole process was very satisfying I was really amazed when I saw the map for my encounter. Jon Roberts did an fantastic job transforming my crude sketch into something I’d want to show off on my gaming table. Having helped create it, A Witch’s Choice isn’t just another module to me, it is something I’m a proud to have been a part of. I highly recommend anyone interested in game design to give a patronage project a try. Even a casual gamer will find it a unique and enjoyable experience. I know I will continue to participate in patron projects to enrich my gaming experience.
After getting a taste of Behind the Spells from the free articles at Kobold Quarterly, I went ahead and acquired the PDF of the compendium. Behind the Spells: Compendium is a collection of the first 36 articles in the series. Each article examines one of the spells that have been in Dungeons and Dragons since the earliest of editions.
An article is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the in-character history of the spell’s creation. The author explains the evolution of a spell from 1st edition to 3rd edition through the perspective of a dragon. Most of this lore is easily added to any fantasy setting, although at times it may directly contradict existing information. In particular he created a reason why the system reference document does not list the names of spell’s creators which are part of Wizard’s of the Coast’s trademarks. The spell histories he provides are entertaining to read. They also contain plenty of hooks and ideas a GM may wish to use in their game.
The second half of an article is a section on spell variants and tricks. Occasionally he gives a new monster or magic item, but most of the information is spell related. Spell tricks are ways to modify a spell at casting time. They usually require a spellcraft check to perform. Some people might think it gives too much power to spellcasters, but I believe it is the type of creative spellcasting that makes problem solving interesting. None of the tricks are particularly powerful; allowing a wizard to use cone of cold to create an ice bridge for example isn’t going to break your game. Also included are quite a few new spells which are creative variants of existing spells.
I usually like to write longer reviews, but each article is only 3-4 pages in length. The quality of articles is fairly consistent throughout. Each article packs a lot of data inside. I can’t classify this as a must have, but it is a very solid supplement. I recommend it to any GM or spellcaster who wants to spice up their use of spells. I certainly plan on picking up a hard copy next time I place a lulu order.
The Zobeck Gazetteer is a 50 page setting guide from Open Design. Zobeck is an independent city that can be placed in any fantasy campaign world and features kobolds, gypsies, and clockwork creations. The Free City of Zobeck is also used in Kobold Quarterly articles, which is an excellent gaming magazine.
One of the most unique things about this product is how it was created. Open Design began as an experiment in RPG patronage. Instead of being contracted to write an adventure for a publisher, Wolfgang Baur decided to write an adventure for a group of patrons. If enough interested people put money toward a project, he would write it for them. But patronage is more than just pre-ordering a product. Being a patron means helping to shape the final product. Not only do patrons help select what the adventure will be about, but they get to provide feedback and ideas as the project is being developed. If you are interested in seeing the process of adventure writing, I definitely recommend taking a look at being a patron. As a result of the extra playtesting and review the final products tend to be very polished.
The most recent patronage project, Tales of Zobeck, has two parts. The first part is the Zobeck Gazetteer which is available for purchase by the public in either PDF or print form. The second part is an anthology of adventures set in Zobeck. This review looks at how the Zobeck Gazetteer stands on its own. I have actually (with difficulty) refrained from reading the adventures in Tales. My current campaign is too high of level to use them directly and I hold a faint hope that someday I can convince someone else to run one of these adventures for me. I came relatively late to the project as a patron so I mostly observed the process and did not take much part in its creation. If you are interested in seeing the process of adventure writing then I definitely recommend taking a look at being a patron. I really like what I’ve seen so far and I plan on being much more involved in the next project.
About two-thirds of the Gazetteer is information about the setting which could be used with any game system. The remaining materials are d20 rules that mainly deal with clockwork creatures and magic. There are details about the city, its inhabitants, and its gods. One of my favorite sections is the Kobold Ghetto. Much of the city’s wealth comes from the silver mines worked by kobolds. The cramped jumble of streets that make up the Ghetto is where they make their home. Visitors, who are allowed in only at night, should be wary of traps that are set throughout the area. Many are just annoying, but some of the traps prove to be deadly. I found their descriptions to be particularly entertaining.
There are six major gods of Zobeck, including Zobeck’s patron deity: Rava the Gear Goddess. Hers is the largest temple in the city and contains the Clockwork Oracle. The rest of the gods are a diverse pantheon that covers most of the usual divine portfolios. I found it interesting that the usual d20 information on gods was not present (domains and favored weapon.) Enough information is presented to easily allow appropriate selections to be made from whichever rules sources a cleric player may have access to.
It is due to the Gear Goddess’s devoted followers that clockwork creations are common in Zobeck. Clockwork soldiers patrol the streets and there is a race of Gearforged that allows players to be constructs themselves. An article on the magic of Zobeck adds a number of clockwork related spells for clerics and wizards. These plus the gear domain are great additions to any game that desires a little more of a steampunk feel.
Overall I think this is a great supplement by itself. It contains a lot of great adventure hook ideas. I’ve already decided that an upcoming villain in my game will be from here. It packs a lot in for its size and leaves you wanting even more. It may make you go out and buy back copies of Kobold Quarterly just for the extra Zobeck articles.
Helix: The Post-Apocalypse, High-Tech, Fantasy, Western RPG is the first game I’ve been given a free review copy of. This excited me and I really wanted to return the favor with a good review, but I must be honest in my opinions. While Helix has a lot of buzzwords in the title, I can sum it up in one: amateurish.
Looking at the credits I see the lack of an editor and it shows in the product. My advice to anyone truly interested in the game is to certainly wait until a revised edition before buying a print copy. For the publisher of the game, I suggest you pay a freelance editor to go over your book at least once before sending a product to print. Sentences like: “You are getting sleepy until you are asleep” do not belong in the rules. If there are grammar mistakes on every page, you need to do more proof reading. A template for monster statistics should be used; I’ve seen “Hite Points” and other typos plus inconsistent ordering of attributes.
Art in the book is about the level I would call high-school doodle art. The sort of art a high-school student might have drawn while bored. If they never took any art classes in college, that’s about the quality you see in this book. There’s a reason good artists study anatomy, so they know how to make a human figure that doesn’t somehow look wrong. I also highly recommend ditching all the pictures of people who look like bad LARPers. Some of the art has pencil smudges and eraser marks that should have been cleaned up in Photoshop.
The rules themselves are relatively simple. Skill rolls use a d6 roll under skill method, attribute rolls are d12 roll under stat. Nothing terrible, but nothing exciting or different. They try to promote themselves as “d12’s aren’t useless anymore.” I hate to say it, but I’ve played several better games that use the d12. Advanced Heroquest or Everlasting are the first that come to mind. I found it odd that a variety of damages were given for unarmed combat that included nearly any body part you’d want to hit someone with, but no reason mechanically for why anyone would do anything besides kick, which does twice the damage of anything else. Unless you are a martial artist, in which case double kick is twice kick damage. Why not just give a single unarmed damage that lets the player describe a kick, punch, or headbutt to accompany it? As it is the only reason to not perform max damage would be aesthetic and role-play reasons.
The over abundance of unneeded skills reminds me of many games I played in the 80’s. As was pointed out in my RPG club’s discussion of the game, there are too many similar skills. Does the game need both seduction and erotic dancing as skills? A tighter list of skills with optional specialties is often a better choice mechanically. The explanation that many skills lets a player customize their background more isn’t helpful if it muddies the game rules too much. The difference between filch and pick-pocket is too nit picky for most people.
The only thing that could have made this worthwhile is a fantastic setting. Instead I think they tried to do too much. The magic system reminds me of the Matrix, or more properly Mage’s Virtual Adepts. It does have a unique shamanistic look at the “computer code as magic” idea though. The game is supposed to take place in the wilderness areas between big cities, but I think some descriptions of the big cities would be nice as well. One of the things I really liked from the original Gamma World boxed set was the poster map of what was once the United States. Expanding more details about the setting would have really improved the product. Come to think of it, I would have preferred this as a setting book for an existing system like True20. There are some interesting ideas in the game that could use further development, but overall it seems to suffer from trying to use too many genres instead of creating a unique new world vision.
I will give them credit for continuing to update their site with extra content. The updates have the same quality of art and editorial oversight, but at least they are trying to give good support to their customers. I wasn’t too impressed with their forums though. The forums are hosted by a forum company, and being asked to click no to a bunch of mailing lists is not an experience I enjoyed. I highly recommend they invest in their own domain so they can operate their own forums and announcements. I wish them luck in their future endeavors, and hope they have learned much from this release.
Universalis is a universal role-playing game. It is not intended to be a Generic Universal Role-Playing Game that allows a game master to run any sort of setting. In fact, it does not have a separate game master at all. It is a very rules light system for cooperative storytelling. Individual players do not necessarily have a specific character they play. Instead the story grows naturally from the input of all players.
Our first game of this turned out to be very silly. It turned into 80’s cartoon adventures. We had a bronze age ruled by My Little Ponies who were at war with Glow Worms. Care Bears were a secret order of holy knights dedicated to preventing the prophecy of Ruxpin the Destroyer, “When all the pyramids fall, Ruxpin shall rise.” In the end it fell to Thundar, the kobold servant of Glow the Hut, and his one time enemy Harold Weston, Squirrel cavalry commander for the ponies, to try and stop the mysterious figure from fulfilling the prophecy. One of their companions was a Marsh Wolf, which are puffy and squishy and smell of hot chocolate. They were trying to stop the gladiatorial fight between the four ponies of the apocolypse (Sniffles, Snuffles, Tum Tum, and Bucket) and the glow worm champion Maltox (huge and spike covered) which would take place upon the last pyramid. If the blood of both fell atop the pyramid, Ruxpin would rise again. The Marsh Wolf revealed itself as the mysterious figure and the protagonists were unable to stop its scheme. Blood flowed and the apocalypse began. We left it there in case we wanted to do a sequal, “Revenge of the Ruxpin.”
It was late, we’d been drinking, and things got very silly. We had a lot of fun though.
Our second game we tried to be much more serious. Probably too serious, as we lost steam somewhere. It is hard to do a mystery without a GM who knows where it is going. Our game was X-files but set in cold war Soviet Union. There was a mysterious murder, a child attacked in the woods by hair, and a mysterious cult involving a barber. Nobody really knew where to take it from there.
So Universalis is very much a game that can be anything. It is only as good as what you put into it. I can’t say we really tested the rules that well, because we never had to resort to the conflict resolution. We always found that people would compromise before it got to that. Perhaps we are simply a more cooperative bunch. As it is, I highly recomend giving this game a try. It is a unique exerience and you never know what you’ll end up with.
Last weekend my friend’s invited me over to play a game of Dogs in the Vineyard. I must admit I was skeptical about the setting at first. You are “God’s Watchdogs” in the wild west, specifically in the early days of Mormon settlers. It is sort of like a Mormon Inquisition, only there still is a US sheriff around to deal with as well. As I am not particularly religious, I rarely play religious characters. On the other hand, role-playing is about being something other than yourself, so I was willing to try it out.
I can say I’m very glad I did. The system is very unique and refreshing. If one of my complaints about 4e Dungeons and Dragons is that it doesn’t support much for role-playing interaction, then Dogs in the Vineyard is exactly the opposite. All conflicts are resolved with a unified system. You start with a pool of dice using two of the four statistics. What pair is used depends on if it is a non-violent conflict, physical brawl, lethal fight, or a gun battle. You have a number of traits for your character that can be anything you can think of. Some of the traits I had were “Knife Fighter” and “Afraid of God” to give you an idea of the variety available. If you can find a way to apply a trait to the given situation, you can roll those dice and add them to your pool. You only use two dice at a time until someone relents or runs out of dice, so each conflict takes a little while to resolve. This lends itself to an action then reaction, back and forth feel. It really encourages creative role-playing and narrative development. Conflicts can always escalate from one form to another. If you are having trouble convincing the town hooligans to back down, roughing them up may do the trick.
Another interesting aspect to the system is that conflict leads to experience. You don’t even have to win to get some. Physical fights can also lead to damage, but most of the consequences of non-lethal engagements are actually good things. Sometimes you might gain new traits, or build new relationships. Damage usually comes in the form of reducing the power of one of your existing traits. Either way, you really get the sense that your character develops over the course of the story.
The setting of the game has the potential to either be very silly or very serious. You are dealing with faith and morality in a potentially lawless area, so which you get depends on the disposition of your group of players. Our story involved the murder of a man in a small town. He lost a lot of money gambling and made a few enemies around town. We soon learned that a group of brothers were the likely suspects, and they even admitted to giving him a beating before his death. The widow was quick to accuse them of the murder, and after a near brawl during a church service she eventually admitted to the crime. It turns out that the man had been taking his frustration out on her, and she finally couldn’t take it any more. In the end we decided that it would be up to her if she turned herself in to the law, for we felt she truly regretted the crime and was driven to it besides. She turned herself in and we left town quietly.
So if you want a story driven role-playing game, I definitely say give Dogs in the Vineyard a shot. I know I have a soft spot for independent games, but we had a blast playing it. It was an engaging experience for all involved and nobody at the table got bored. All in all we had a great experience and in the end that’s what counts the most.
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since the earliest of editions.
boxed set was the poster map of what was once the United States. Expanding more details about the setting would have really improved the product. Come to think of it, I would have preferred this as a setting book for an existing system like 
is that it doesn’t support much for role-playing interaction, then Dogs in the Vineyard is exactly the opposite. All conflicts are resolved with a unified system. You start with a pool of dice using two of the four statistics. What pair is used depends on if it is a non-violent conflict, physical brawl, lethal fight, or a gun battle. You have a number of traits for your character that can be anything you can think of. Some of the traits I had were “Knife Fighter” and “Afraid of God” to give you an idea of the variety available. If you can find a way to apply a trait to the given situation, you can roll those dice and add them to your pool. You only use two dice at a time until someone relents or runs out of dice, so each conflict takes a little while to resolve. This lends itself to an action then reaction, back and forth feel. It really encourages creative role-playing and narrative development. Conflicts can always escalate from one form to another. If you are having trouble convincing the town hooligans to back down, roughing them up may do the trick.