Twilight Sector is a sourcebook from Terra/Sol Games for the Mongoose Traveller RPG. I received a free review PDF and have not used it in a game yet.
Traveller is one of the oldest science fiction role-playing games. There have been many versions over the years; right now the most active and widely available version is by Mongoose Publishing. At its heart, Traveller is a game about space travel. Characters are usually the crew of a space ship. They may be mercenaries, free traders, outlaws or military. The idea is that there are countless worlds out there to explore.
It was originally designed to be a generic space role-playing game that could be used for any setting. Star Trek, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Firefly, Farscape or many others could all easily be adapted to the Traveller rules. But a game needs an example setting to get people started. What started as a few example sectors of space grew over time to be known as the “original traveller universe”. I have seen a map of the Third Imperium printed out in a 56”x50” poster and it is overwhelming to behold. The traveller universe however, is just one possible setting you could use.
One of the things Mongoose has done is opened the production of supplements to third party publishers. It is an open license similar to the d20 license that Wizard’s of the Coast used to offer, or the GSL of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons. So Terra/Sol Games has created their own alternative universe for people to play with. It is really just a beginning, as it only details an area the size of a subsector. There are 7 systems and 2 starbases, each of which is quite detailed. They even have maps of each main planet and solar system. Even if you don’t want to use the detailed timeline and alternate history, these planets are worth borrowing to insert into whichever universe you do play in. The sector itself is meant to have a number of mysteries and it is left to the individual GMs to decide what the answers are. It can easily be worked into an existing campaign as a newly discovered region on the edge of known space.
Twilight Sector also focuses on mutants. There are both natural mutants and genetically induced mutants. There is a fairly detailed section on how to create characters of both types. I would have to use them in play to get a feel for the balance, but they usually have both positive and negative mutations. They can certainly add a unique feel to a game. I could see a group of mutants trying to fit in as an excellent basis for a campaign.
The book has served to rekindle my interest in Traveller. I myself will probably just borrow parts from it, as building my own universe is part of what I enjoy about the game. Twilight Sector certainly provides some interesting bricks for me to use though. The alternate history is an interesting read and full of good ideas. I definitely look forward to more books from Terra/Sol Games, as it is always refreshing to look at an old game from a new perspective.
Apathy Rating: 3/5.
Want to learn more about Twilight Sector? Read on…
When I became a patron for The Red Eye of Azathoth, I started keeping a closer eye on new Call of Cthulhu products. So when I got the opportunity to review Our Ladies of Sorrow, I jumped at the chance. In the interest of full disclosure I received the PDF for free and have not actually played through the module yet. On the other hand, I’m of the opinion that a GM has to get excited about a product with a read through or it won’t get played by many people. The PDF is quite a lot for your money: with 150+ pages and a trilogy of related adventures, it can be the basis of a short campaign. The art is only black and white line drawings. They are nicely done and probably helped keep the cost down.
In some ways these are not typical Call of Cthulhu adventures. It starts with a strange event and expects the players to want to investigate. There is nothing wrong with that approach, you just have to make certain that your players know what kind of expectations to have. It wouldn’t have been The X-Files if Mulder ignored strange occurrences around him, and this adventure would make an excellent X-Files episode.
In other ways these adventures are very different from your typical Call of Cthulhu fare. It has no real connection to the mythos. The primary antagonists are pulled from the world’s mythology. The main antagonists are a take on the Three Fates or Three Hags or many other stories about three women with magical powers. The author gives a few ways that they can be integrated more closely to the Cthulhu Mythos, but I think it stands better apart. Lovecraft experts and new comers alike will have their expectations challenged during the course of the adventures and I think that is half the fun of Call of Cthulhu.
The author definitely put a lot of work into this module. An appendix includes all the various mythological sources that the Ladies of Sorrow can be linked to. A fairly lengthy introduction gives one a sense for how the adventures are meant to be used. If the idea of running a modern supernatural mystery is appealing, this module is for you.
Apathy Rating: 3/5.
Want to learn more about Our Ladies of Sorrow? Read on…
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…
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.
Edit: Now that the final version is released, here is my second look.
I’ve had a chance to look a little closer at the Pathfiner RPG Beta. I then proceeded to write a review that was over a thousand words long. After looking it over I decided to start all over again. I realized that while I was examining the differences between it and 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, the resulting review would only be useful to those who have a nuanced familiarity with the 3.5 rules. The target of this review shouldn’t be nearly so narrow. If you are that interested in the minute rules differences, go read the Beta rules yourself. What I took away from the exercise is that I really care about the Pathfinder RPG product, and know that I will purchase the final rules when they are out next year.
So I can’t write a review of the Pathfinder RPG without looking at a little history. Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game that has been around since 1977. The game has evolved quite a lot since then, and in the year 2000 the 3rd edition was created. On the one hand it changed the way a lot of things worked from the earlier editions. It added a much needed skill system. There was a new method for playing multiple classes, allowing a character to mix and match its skills and abilities from different careers. Other things remained much the same. The structure of wizard spell casting, having to memorize spells from a list, isn’t much different from the original version. As always, there was some grumbling from older players that it was no longer the game they wanted to play. But for the most part it brought a new group of people into the game, and many players back. I myself had skipped over the entirety of 2nd edition, having many years before moved on to other games like Palladium Fantasy Roleplay or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. When 3rd edition came out Dungeons and Dragons was great again and I, like many others, returned to it.
Another interesting experiment that Wizards of the Coast did was to create the Open Gaming License. The idea was to allow any company to produce material for Dungeons and Dragons. Anything that was created under this license could be reused in other products using the same license.This created a new industry of companies building supporting products. Quality of these products varied, but there are certainly some remarkable supplements and amazing adventures out there. When 4th edition was released, and a much different licensing scheme was introduced, publishers of these products had a choice: Continue making products for the open version of Dungeons and Dragons, or try the new version with a more limited license. What I find interesting is that because of this license there will be some form of 3rd edition available for as long as people are interested in playing it. So when Paizo decided that they would continue to produce content for the game they already love, they also decided to print a rulebook so that anyone interested in their products would have a source for those rules. The Pathfinder Role-playing Game was born.
Paizo has certainly put a lot of work into it. It weighs in at 410 pages, and is a complete fantasy adventure role-playing game system. It is an evolution of the d20 3.5 SRD, so I look at it as an off-shoot of Dungeons and Dragons. Many things are slightly different though, so the biggest difficulty existing players will have in learning it are the subtle changes. I will admit my players still surprise me sometimes with rules changes from 3.0 to 3.5, so there is no way I will find all the differences anytime soon. I do appreciate that all of the rules are in one book. It doesn’t include monsters, but you don’t have to hunt in another book for rules on traps, poison, magic items, creating monsters, or creating encounters.
First impression is that this is a well thought out product. This is written by people very familiar with original rules. They may not have made all the changes you were looking for, but the system they have created is designed to still be reasonably compatible with existing OGL 3.5 adventures and supplements. The first thing that stands out is that all of the basic classes and races have a little more power than they had before. The idea is that many of the existing supplements have made the base classes and races under-powered in comparison. This is probably the biggest change that might keep existing players using the original rules. I like the changes as they allow a little more freedom when creating new races. I am a fan of Planescape, and it would be relatively easy to convert many of the races from the planes into something more balanced with the new core races. I would move some of the more powerful abilities into racial specific feats, and build a set of playable races that way.
They also tried to make it more appealing to stay in the base classes longer. There is something new you get from each class at every level. Classes also have some very hefty abilities added at 20th. I’ve heard them described as ‘near epic’, but I can’t really judge as I’ve never played that high level. On the other hand, 20th level is fairly close to epic anyway, so I don’t think it really matters. One thing that is still being debated over at the Paizo boards is whether or not Fighters and Wizards are balanced. One of the common complaints about 3.5 is that at high levels, the wizard becomes extremely potent compared to the fighter. It is true that the fighter has always dominated at low levels, but eventually a wizard is able to use such powerful magic spells that the fighter becomes merely a bodyguard that gets in the way. So with all of the classes getting a little more power, the casters are no exception. The question of whether the casters still overshadow the melee characters is still debated.
I find myself liking the Pathfinder RPG. It isn’t a finished product yet, so I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners. If you are interested in being involved in the development of a game, or have ever liked the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I highly recommend you give it a look. Now is the perfect time as the rules are available for free. I realized that customizable characters is what I’m missing from 4th edition. I expect I will continue to play both versions of the game for years to come. I definitely look forward to next year when I will likely be able to recommend the finished Pathfinder RPG to newcomers and old hands alike.
I know previously I promised a review of the Pathfinder RPG Beta. I still plan on reviewing it but it is a fairly large book (400 pages plus a 60 page web enhancement) and I want to do it justice. So instead I will start with another Paizo product: Pathfinder 13: Shadow in the Sky. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Paizo, they used to be the publishers of Dungeon and Dragon Magazines. When Wizards of the Coast decided to publish the magazines themselves in an online format, Paizo had to find a new direction for their business. They decided to continue doing what they do best: publish monthly material for Dungeons and Dragons. Every month they produce a 90+ page booklet that contains several adventures in a campaign series. Each campaign comes in 6 installments, and takes a party from level 1 to about 15. Shadows in the Sky marks the beginning of their third adventure path, Second Darkness. When 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons was announced Paizo decided to continue publishing adventures for 3.5 instead, and began developing Pathfinder RPG so that some form of 3rd edition would remain to allow anyone to play their adventures.
So first I must touch on the production value of the book. Each page is glossy and full color. It is much nicer quality than most adventure books I’ve seen. The price is a little high for such a slim book, but if you get a subscription you get 30% off and a free pdf of each book. I definitely appreciate the pdf, as I always like to print out copies of maps for reference during games. An active subscription also gets you 15% off all other Paizo products, which is a nice bonus if you plan on buying any quantity of Paizo products. They certainly put their experience in the magazine industry to produce a very nice product (actually now they have other complementary product lines as well) every month.
The first half of the book is the adventures for the story arc. Being the first adventure of the path, it takes characters from first level and leaves them just getting to 4th level at the end. The book takes place in Riddleport, an old pirate town turned trade hub that contains a mysterious runed archway across the harbor mouth. These beginning adventures begin by pitting the players against the criminal underworld of Riddleport, and end with them facing what will become the villains of the overall campaign, drow. The outline of adventures to come sounds very promising, as any epic quest against the drow is always a favorite of players.
I have only the first part to judge though, but it is a well thought out beginning adventure. It is almost entirely urban in nature, which I’ve always found to be both challenging and rewarding to run and play. They do a good job of making suggestions for alternatives for when the players inevitably deviate from the primary path. By the end they will have a number of enemies and allies in the city. I also appreciated that the adventure is well suited for both good and evil parties, even though they of course are slanted toward at least a modestly good group. The climactic end battle looks very fun to run, and should feel rather cinematic for the players.
The second half of the book includes supplemental material that would be useful for any game. There is a description of Riddleport and key important figures. A number of key locations are well detailed and can be added to any city. Four gambling games are described which can add flavor to any tavern encounters of any game. Included is a stand alone adventure, to be used if the group needs a little extra experience in the campaign, or just something to add to any existing game. There are four new monsters to add to your DM’s toolkit as well.
Overall I was impressed with the product. Even though I don’t know when I might be able to run the adventure, I am certainly glad I decided to purchase it. My only regret is that it took me a year before I got a subscription. Even if you don’t like running a scripted campaign, I recommend checking out their other product lines. If you plan on continuing to use 3rd edition, Paizo is the company to watch.
Last week I mentioned True20 as a possible alternative to 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. This week I took a closer look at True20, and I’m not certain if that really is the case. Not to say that True20 is a bad system, but it definitely doesn’t feel like D&D. I would say that it is a good system if you want a light rules set that is easily customizable to any setting. I will admit when I first glanced at it, I felt it didn’t have a lot of substance to it. I saw it as a set of rules that formed a solid basis, but needing a little more to make it feel complete. After closer examination however, I find that isn’t the case. It comes with four sample settings in the back of the book which help fill out the game. They are useful not only as settings in themselves, but as guidelines to help you tailor the rules to suit whichever setting you decide to use. Of course there are quite a few settings books also published for the system, so there is plenty of material to work with should you decide to invest in the system. I myself plan on examining Roma Imperious, an interesting alternate history setting which has also been published using the Iridium lite system.
One of the things that stands out about True20 are the Roles. The basic book has only three Roles, which take the place of the many classes of D&D. There are Adepts, which have a weak attack bonus progression, that can be customized to be any character that draws upon supernatural powers. If you want to be a psychic, wizard, alchemist, mad scientist, or shaman, Adept is the role for you. There are Experts, which have a moderate attack bonus progression, and can be anything from thieves, doctors, or priests. And of course there are Warriors, which have the best attack bonus, and are the soldiers, mercenaries, gladiators, or bounty hunters of the world. Each of these roles can be customized by different archetypes, which are usually setting specific, that open access to certain feats or skills. The intent is to have a simple core mechanic that can be styled for many different character types. It is a fairly elegant system, and keeps things rather balanced.
Combat is another thing that is quite a bit different from the game’s d20 roots. Instead of weapons doing a variable amount of dice worth of damage, everything is represented by a damage bonus. Characters don’t have a hit point total, they have a list of injury states. When someone is hit in combat, they roll a saving throw with the difficulty modified by the damage bonus. The amount they fail determines what injury state you receive. So if you just barely miss your save against a fist, you’ll just be bruised. If you fail by a lot against a laser pistol, you will be seriously injured. Since injury states have penalties attached to them, this can lead to a slow wearing down of a characters defenses. Extremely tough characters may be able to simply shrug of many light blows, coming away from a fight completely unscathed. I also noticed the removal of attacks of opportunity, which tends to make it easier to run combat without miniatures. This can be a pro or a con depending on your taste in gaming.
Overall, I like the system and think it holds a useful niche. If you want either a more gritty or a more cinematic game than D&D, True20 can work for you. If you are looking for a more skill based role-playing system, with a light rules set that emphasizes story over mechanics, this game is worth checking out. If you are mostly happy with 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons and simply want a refinement but not the complete overhaul that is 4th edition, I’ll be looking at the new Pathfinder RPG from Paizo next which may be more your style.
So I wanted to wait a little while to really get a feel for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons before writing a review of it. I know that many have mixed feelings about the new version, especially so soon after 3.5 came out. I do find it interesting that do to the Open Gaming License 3.x will live on in other companies through the likes of True 20, Pathfinder RPG, and other 3rd party projects. So if you decide that 4th Edition is not for you fear not, there will be plenty of d20 products for the foreseeable future. I also highly recommend anything by Monte Cook which you can read more about at his page.
Enough about other products though, you’d like to hear about Dungeons and Dragons. First off, the new edition definitely takes the game in a new direction. So how much you like the game will depend a lot on whether or not you like the new direction. While the transition from 2nd to 3rd edition felt like a natural progression from DnD’s roots, 4th edition feels very new. It has been streamlined and balanced so that everyone has roughly equal power during combat. It definitely feels as though most of the non-combat has been stripped from the game. Skills are trimmed down a lot, being more similar to 2nd edition proficiencies than 3rd edition skills. You have two to six skills, which have much broader definitions now, and the bonus is determined by your level and the associated attribute. Just about everything else has a direct bearing on combat.
Every class has the same progression of powers as each other. So I do worry how they will manage to keep expanding new classes and keep them feeling different. On the other hand, they do an excellent job of keeping every player involved during combat. There is also a definite teamwork feel to things. As we played we discovered that our actions interacted with each others turns a lot more than they used to. As an example, I once placed a storm cage around a dragon with my mage. The rogue then used a positioning strike to push one of the nearby minions into the cage instead of the sneak attack he planned on using. You really get the sense of working together. I’m not sure how well it scales down to few players though, it is designed for groups between four and six. I know this isn’t usually a problem for my current group, but I remember the days when I would play with just one or two others.
From a game master’s perspective the game is certainly easier to manage. Monsters are a lot simpler to put together, even NPCs with class levels. Instead of fleshing out a full character, which is definitely a lot faster at higher levels than it used to be, you just pick one or two powers at close to the level of the npc. It is a great improvement over spending labourous hours building up an npc in 3.5, only to have it be killed in a few rounds of combat. Even if you want to spend time preparing fully fledged characters, the creation process is streamlined and a lot easier.
So as much as I’d like to gripe about how messed up things are in the new version, I have to say I’ve enjoyed playing it. It won’t be for everyone, because it definitely is a different game. But if someone else had published it and given it a different name, I’d have to recommend looking into it. It may not be what you are looking for, but it is definitely a fine game.
In an unrelated note, I have recently acquired a large collection of older games. Expect to see reviews of some old classics, plus updates on the latest versions of these, in the near future.
I really wanted to review Road to Legends, an expansion for Descent. It is an expansion I’ve been waiting for since I purchased the base game last summer. It hasn’t been released quite yet however and I promise not to review a game until I’ve actually played it. Considering the length of time a campaign will take, it may be a month before I can give it a proper review. Next week I’ll be looking at Super Smash Bros. Brawl, once I’ve actually managed to unlock all the characters. So this week I am taking a break from Fantasy Flight Games and taking a look at Ticket to Ride: Switzerland from Days of Wonder.
Switzerland is an expansion to any of the Ticket to Ride games. You need the pieces from Ticket to Ride, Europe Edition, or Marklin Edition. All of these games are really the same, they just have different maps. During the game you score points for claiming different train routes. The longer the route, the more points it is worth. If someone has claimed a route, you can’t put your trains there. This is very important when you are trying to complete tickets, which is where the real substantial point gains are. At the beginning of the game you draw five tickets, and can choose to keep between two and five of them. Each ticket has two destinations and a point value. If you manage to connect the destinations with your trains by the end of the game, you earn the points. If you don’t, you lose the points. If someone claims a route you were planning to use, you may have to go way around or lose a lot of points.
This version of the map is a lot tighter than the others. It only allows two or three players. It is very easy to cut somebody off from their intended route, unintentionally or on purpose. If you want a shorter, more competitive game, this is the version to get. I won’t bother playing the bigger map now unless I have four or five players. This map also tends to be a lot more ticket intensive. On your turn you can draw three new tickets and you must keep at least one of them. In the first game we played I was surprised that my friend was able to pull way ahead with a lot of tickets, despite being twenty points behind at the end of the game. He connected France with Austria and scored four tickets at fourteen points each for it, plus several smaller tickets for cities along the way.
Most of the bad things I can say about this game are related to it being an expansion. It’s good enough to be a stand alone game on its own. There isn’t a place to store the tickets in the box when you have opened it, but since you’ll need parts from a full game anyway I recommend keeping them in the main box. Since I have Ticket to Ride: Europe, which doesn’t have five length routes, I had to look on the internet to discover they were worth ten points. An extra card for scoring reference would have been handy. It is a solid map though, and a great game for when you only have a few players.
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products. So when I got the opportunity to review 
if Mulder ignored strange occurrences around him, and this adventure would make an excellent X-Files episode.
, the resulting review would only be useful to those who have a nuanced familiarity with the 3.5 rules. The target of this review shouldn’t be nearly so narrow. If you are that interested in the minute rules differences, go read the Beta rules yourself. What I took away from the exercise is that I really care about the Pathfinder RPG product, and know that I will purchase the final rules when they are out next year.