On the Radar: Some Thoughts on the Ennies

I was browsing through the winners of the Ennies, trying -- I suppose -- to see how up-to-date and in tune I really was with the popular view of the RPG industry. Overall, I sense that I'm really a niched kind of gamer, with off-center tastes, but I'd hesitate to call myself eccentric or unusual given the pool of gamers out there.

Here are a few things that caught my eye:

Night's Black Agents gets the Silvers for Best Game AND Best Writing

I did an Armchair Review for this RPG and its related campaign, The Zalohzny Quartet, and I heartily agree with the award. It's a lovely crafted subgenre that does spectacular work in focusing on the parent genre -- espionage -- for genre emulation.

I think a lot of people recognize its many merits; after all it was nominated for Best Rules, Best Interior Art, Best Game, Best Writing and Product of the Year!

On a meta level, the Gumshoe ruleset is certainly coming along nicely. It's gotten so that the ruleset allows for a greater variety of genre scope.

In fact, with Night's Black Agents, Ashen Stars, Trail of Cthulhu, and Mutant City Blues, a possible sub-campaign premise in my developing Confederation Chronicles campaign would be:

Not all Lasers are released into the wilds of space. Some are tasked to keep track of worlds and systems being brought into the fold of the expanding Confederation -- to make sure that the weaknesses, dangers, and existential threats that might be lurking beneath the surface of these rediscovered wonders do not destroy all that the Confederation has built.

Trained, Motivated, and gifted with special abilities that set them apart from their peers, these Ultra-violet Lasers stand against another Fall of Night, as the Confederation struggles toward a true rebirth.

Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space wins the Gold for Best Family Game AND Doctor Who: The Time Traveler's Companion wins the Silver for Best Supplement

I quite like this RPG, and I'd never actually thought about it as being a family game. The de-emphasis on combat (and rules that support this -- with talking and running taking place before any combat initiative-wise) was, in my mind, a great nod to this genre of TV show.

In retrospect, it does have a family appeal with the emphasis on resorting to communication first, before resorting to an out-and-out rumble.

The supplements for this RPG have also been astounding, with real love for the entire series very evident. A review of the Second Doctor's sourcebook will be upcoming.

Other Items of Note

Eldritch Skies gets a Judge's nod -- a game whose take on the Cthulhu mythos deserves a return, beyond my initial Armchair Review. Certain themes and aspects of the themes and tone make it a fresh feel on the standard mythos treatement, in my humble opinion.

Also, this Pathfinder RPG seems to be really popular. ;) Probably should give it a read.

Armchair Review: The Zalozhniy Quartet

I posted my review of this Night's Black Agents adventure earlier in the year on RPGNow, but forgot to put it here:

t

Once you've settled in to your regularly Night's Black Agents sessions, I highly recommend The Zalozhniy Quartet.

Set in post-Cold War Europe, agents must unearth the nature of the conspiracy from clues, and a tangled web of allies, foils, and enemies.

I liken it to a shorter Masks of Nyarlathotep, wherein the campaign is best run when the Director (GM) has read through all the materials, has prepared and understood where all the events, clues, NPCs, and linkages are in advance so as to maximize the enjoyment and reward of the players when (if?) they overcome this slew of antagonists and difficulties.

Unlike Masks, the author has gone out of his way to enable running the four segments of the campaign in any order! This means that there are options for each segment to be modified if it is played 2nd, 3rd or last (and therefore a climactic ending) in the campaign.

As a resource for a supernaturally touched post-Cold War Europe, it also has a lot of material to mine and reuse in future campaigns.

I'm a bit daunted by the modern day espionage campaign; perhaps I always was. But when I remind myself that a campaign can be grounded in cinematic versions of espionage, then I can probably try my hand at it.

There is a certain level of commitment to this type of campaign, certainly. And my old GM muscles want me to actually insert it into an ongoing campaign. But I think it actually might work as is, sort of a tip of the hat to British TV series -- a complete season in one go.

Armchair Review: Night's Black Agents

Click the pic to see the RPGNow page.

This little gem from Kenneth Hite and Pelgrane Press comes at a really good time for me. Of course, I've written about my fascination for the Cold War era espionage genre, as well as the more action-packed Top Secret type of game, and other subgenres of the modern spy story before. But I think that with modern TV shows like Homeland and Rubicon, my interest in modern espionage has resurfaced.

Unfortunately, I'm just not up to keeping track of all the various socio-political alliances, tensions and betrayals all around the world for such a campaign. And I'm envious of those who can. I'd been thinking of creating an international evil spy / paramilitary organization, sort of a cross between S.P.E.C.T.R.E., T.H.R.U.S.H., and the WEB from Top Secret / S.I. when I heard about this RPG in development and decided to wait.

Here's the blurb from RPGNow:

The Cold War is over. Bush’s War is winding down.

You were a shadowy soldier in those fights, trained to move through the secret world: deniable and deadly. 

Then you got out, or you got shut out, or you got burned out. You didn’t come in from the cold. Instead, you found your own entrances into Europe’s clandestine networks of power and crime. You did a few ops, and you asked even fewer questions. Who gave you that job in Prague? Who paid for your silence in that Swiss account? You told yourself it didn’t matter. 

It turned out to matter a lot. Because it turned out you were working for vampires.
Vampires exist. What can they do? Who do they own? Where is safe? You don’t know those answers yet. So you’d better start asking questions. You have to trace the bloodsuckers’ operations, penetrate their networks, follow their trail, and target their weak points. Because if you don’t hunt them, they will hunt you. And they will kill you. 

Or worse.

Fantastic internal illustration from the book.

Now that Night's Black Agents is finally out, I've gotten ahold of a copy and haven't been disappointed. Here's my shortish review:

There is much to love about this RPG. First, it extends the already interesting Gumshoe game system used for such games as Ashen Stars, Trail of Cthulhu, Esoterrorists and Mutant City Blues. I've been itching to try out the investigation mechanics for Gumshoe, and this recent incarnation and extension of the ruleset affords me such additional rules the combat and cinematic chase rules to support the espionage/thriller genre. 

Next, it also provides rule options to help emulate and support various subgenres of the spy thriller. There are rules for the interestingly-named subgenres: Burn ("psychological damage and the cost of heroism"), Dust ("gritty, lo-fi espionage"), Mirror ("hidden agendas and shifting alliances"), and Stakes ("higher purposes than mere survival or 'getting the job done'"). In addition to the Drives and Sources of Stability that we've seen in other flavors of Gumshoe, the Trust / Betrayal mechanics are particularly interesting and volatile in a espionage game (reminds me of Cold City / Hot War)! 

Gunplay and cinematic chase rules look good from the emulation space, though I'd be remiss if I didn't say that proper playtesting should be done on my part before I can say if it's to my taste. 

As for the vampire aspect -- great latitude is given to the GM and the players is choosing the type of vampires they're fighting (which is good to keep the surprises coming in a thriller), and the organization creation rules married with the classic genre pattern of starting at the bottom of the conspiracy pyramid and moving up through the ranks until dealing with the Big Bad (to borrow some Buffy terminology here) has really ratcheted up my desire to play this game as soon as possible! That's made easier by the sample vampires and their various minions also included in the book. 

Well done, Pelgrane Press -- I look forward to future releases in this line!

So I've started up character creation for a PBEM game with some friends, and hope to put this thing through its paces. I'm already thinking of how the Vampire: The Masquerade elements might be reformed into some kind of more criminal, espionage, world domination-y spin.

RPG News: Pelgrane-Hero-Redbrick

What happened in the past year for some Game Publishers of note? And what lies in store in the future? Here's an initial roundup of several publishers I keep track of:

Pelgrane Press

According to their December post, Pelgrane enjoyed a good year in 2011 - more sales, more review, more rewards, and more people playing their games (which, as an armchair gamer, I understand as not necessarily being the same as sales).

Apparently, the Trail of Cthulhu campaign frame Bookhounds of London had a limited edition run which included "The Book of the Smoke", which was a sleeper hit. A sleeper hit? Fine, am gonna hunt that down then -- it's only visible on their site though, and doesn't appear to be in DriveThruRPG/RPGNow or in the PDF copy of Bookhounds. Grrrr.

Ashen Stars, their science fiction offering for Gumshoe broke even, which is good because I rather liked the setting and have decided that combat-light, exploration & investigation-heavy games might be good for short-run play-by-post online games this year. Next year, we can expect a larger campaign book for Ashen Stars called Terra Nova in January.

Other things we can look forward to:

• a collection of four adventures for the Night's Black Agents RPG - a cool little RPG by Ken Hite that calls to my fascination with espionage adventures and a shadow war against supernatural forces;
• more stuff for Trail of Cthulhu
• more stuff for Esoterrorists

Hero Games

In the wake of the reduction of Hero Games's regular workforce by two-thirds, there's apparently a kickstarter out for an RPG supplement called Book of the Empress. The empress in question would be a multiverse-conquering villainess (well known to longtime Hero 5th Edition followers) who has set her sights on Earth: Istvatha V'han.



Also, we can expect the revised 3rd party license for new Hero products out soon - after current licensees review it and give feedback.

Redbrick

A forum post on the new site last year reveals that we can expect four Fading Suns releases from Redbrick every year onwards, starting this year. In Q1, the Fading Suns Player's Guide, and in Q2, the Fading Suns Zoomba Guide -- just kidding -- the Fading Suns Game Master's Guide. Quite a gap between the two, but we're assured that much of the second book is source material and therefore not necessarily a hinderance to longtime fans of the setting.

Some longtime fans wonder: "when in Q1?" Well, according to a translated French site -- January 2012! Then again, it refers back to the forum pages of Redbrick and I can't seem to find that particular date.

As for Q3 and Q4, we can expect two of the following books to come out: House of the Lion [to be written by Angus McNicholl], House of the Mantis [to be written by Gabriel Zarate], Universal Church [to be written by Vidar Edland], Forbidden Lore: Heresies [to be written by Vidar Edland],
Pirates of the Jumpweb [to be written by Todd Bogenrief].

Based on the chosen nomenclature of the books of the Houses of Nobility, one wonders what they'll be calling the books for the Li Halan, The Hazat, and the Al-Malik.

But it won't be all big books; apparently we can expect 3rd Edition shards to come out which should not only give some new gamers sample scenarios, but also let the rest of us know what the Known Worlds is like in the updated milieu.

On the Radar: Pelgrane Press's Ashen Stars (Stellar Nursery Edition)

I'm not that clear on the details, but apparently the Stellar Nursery edition of Ashen Stars is the same as the Pre-pre-order edition. In any case you can check out the details here.

But what is Ashen Stars? Well, it's an RPG (system: Gumshoe) of a Science Fiction bent that's been mentioned by others as inspired by Babylon 5, Firefly, and Farscape. Here's the official spiel:

In this gritty space opera game, the PCs are Lasers, freelance troubleshooters and law enforcers operating in a remote sector called the Bleed. They’re needed in the wake of a massive retreat by the Combine,  the utopian empire that colonized it. Amid the ashes of a devastating war, the lasers solve mysteries, fix thorny problems, and explore strange corners of space—all on a contract basis.

They balance the immediate rewards of a quick buck against their need to maintain their reputation, so that they can continue to quickly secure lucrative contracts and pay the upkeep on their ship and their cyber- and viroware enhancements.

Featuring seven new and highly detailed playable species -

• The eerily beautiful, nature-loving, emotion-fearing balla

• The cybes, former humans radically altered by cybernetic and genetic science

• The durugh, hunched, furtive ex-enemies of the Combine who can momentarily phase through solid matter.

• The humans, adaptable, resourceful, and numerous. They comprise the majority of a typical laser crew.

• The kch-thk, warrior locust people who migrate to new bodies when their old ones are destroyed.

• The armadillo-like tavak, followers of a serene warrior ethic.

• The vas mal, former near-omnisicent energy beings devolved by disaster into misshapen humanoid form.

Ashen Stars also contains extensive, streamlined rules for space combat, 14 different types of ship, a rogues gallery of NPC threats and hostile species’ and a short adventure to get you started in the Bleed.

I'm curious to see what it'll be like when it comes out. It'll be oh-so-minable for Fading Suns, I'm sure. :)

Quick Read Review - Mutant City Blues

Ten years ago, one percent of the population gained mutant powers. But one percent of the citizens means one percent of the criminals – and you're the cops who clean up the mess.

As you may have gleaned from the blurb, this RPG is set in the near future, after a virus event seemingly grants a significant percentage of the population beneficial mutations – of the super-powers variety.

Surprisingly, the world is not radically changed by this – not everyone decides to become a superhero or supervillain, not everyone wants to cash in on their abilities, and so some people go on with their lives trying to hide and forget that they have powers and abilities far beyond those of mere mortals.

But enough do, and some of them commit crimes, and that’s where you come in.

Powered by the Gumshoe system – a game system focused on investigation-oriented adventures – Mutant City Blues allows you to solve super-powered crimes and capers committed by a cast that could be taken from Heroes with a tone ranging from Castle’s light-hearted banter to Law & Order’s gritty procedurals.

One of the more interesting elements of this game is the Quade diagram. While most RPGs involving super-powers make a big deal out of being able to replicate any power in the comic books, Mutant City Blues imposes limits and definite patterns to metahuman abilities. In game terms, abilities connected to other abilities with a solid line are free; abilities connected to other abilities with a dotted line cost 2 points for each ability traversed; and abilities not connected cannot be purchased (you have to trace the web of lines to get to the ability you want).

This intriguing part of the game has two immediately obvious effects: (1) it suggests that in this particular setting, there is a predictability to meta-human powers, making professional crime-solving more about investigation, research, and deduction rather than a brainstorming / argument session about what weird combination of abilities was most likely to have been used to perpetrate the crime; (2) it makes certain combinations of abilities more desirable and other combinations of abilities too damn expensive to build.

Mutant City Blues looks like an RPG worthy of the mini-series treatment: build characters and play for a “season” of 3 to 6 episodes, then step back and evaluate how your campaign is going. If there’s promise, then make tweaks and start into the second season.

Suggested campaign inspirations: Law & Order, Heroes, Touching Evil, Castle, X-files, Warehouse 13 and Wire in the Blood.