Origins 2011 had a lot of great moment, but one of them was meeting Steve Bergeron and his crew at Outrider Studios, another Crazy Canadian designer out of Cornwall Ontario. They had even got a booth! Which was both insane and, well, insane but it allowed them to meet a pile of people. I was one of those lucky people, they were really cool and eager to show off their game. This is how this review was born, I was given a copy and I said I would have a review done in two weeks.
Here is this review.
Remnants
Remnants can be described as Mecha Combat meets Post Apocalyptic game. You play people trying to survive on a planet where the ancient ones basically wiped each other out through by using their MAD weapons. There is barely enough to scratch out a living, let alone grow in a wild and inhospitable environment. However, there were pieces of grand technology that were left behind, most of them are small and insignificant, but then there are the Ishin, the Battle Remnants.
The system itself is a traditional RPG that works off of a single D6, and it a Margin of Success Game. The bigger the margin of success is, the more good stuff you get. The more damage you do, the better the result is for the action you're doing. The system, which is also used in their Fantasy Game, has a wonderful term for it called The Lead, which is something everyone should use right now when they have a MoS game. It's elegant, and to the point. I know I'm going to steal it if I do one.
What I liked about this game
Thematically there are a lot of lovely little moments in the setting. The fact that as the descendants of a highly advanced race you are all immortal. That doesn't mean you won't get killed when someone sharp stabs you, but you are the progeny of people who knew how to tinker with genes and so you're not going to die of old age, hooray! However, the amount of food you need after you hit 40 is more than what most cultures can sustain in this post apocalyptic setting which means you'll end up starving to death, boo! It's morbidly perfect.
I like the fact that the Ishin are actually the low end technology that survived because they were scouts that were meant to be self sufficient. This leads into the fact that in order to upgrade your Ishin, you need to put stress on it. The more dangerous a situation is, the more risks you take the more Duress you put on your Ishin and the more points you get to upgrade. When it gets damaged to the point where it's wrecked, it gains points to upgrade. It gives you mechanical incentive to push your Ishin to the limit.
The world feels deadly and dangerous, which is wonderfully in keeping with a Post Apoc game. Not only do you have to deal with other people trying to kill you, you have to deal with the environment doing its damnest to make sure you die.
The system works, and is pretty deadly. You can take about 5 hits before you're out of the fight and one more hit before you're dead. One good roll and you're looking at a spear through the chest. That means your players are less likely to jump into a fight right away after they learn the hard way that swords and spears are sharp and look good covered in your blood.
Finally, I love the economic system. Anything that can take the bookkeeping of most other RPG games and turn it into a concept called "Easy Living" is great. Easy Living is how many days you can basically live off the avails of your work. You can barter that away, since money really isn't used much outside of the few major cities and then each city has its own currency which renders it really useless, but it's nice and abstract. Good for getting what you need and then discarding the rest.
What I didn't like about the game
The Economic System. I know I just said that I loved it, and I do. I love the concept of how everything works. What I'm not too interested in are the guidelines provided by the book. I think at no point in time should a player have anything more than a week's worth of easy living. However, there are jobs that the book says that a player should get something like 60 days worth of easy living. In a world with very little, my acceptance of the fiction took a huge blow at that. My thought is that if it gets to be that big, you should just give them some land or something big and cool rather than a lifetime supply of kicking back with cold ones.
My personal suggestion is to take what the book suggests and then slash a zero from the back of number. That should be the figure of easy living you use when dealing with financial rewards in the game.
The art. There's nothing intrinsically bad with the art. A lot of it is really good, actually. The problem is that it looks that in a lot of places that they took colour art and just desaturated the photos in photoshop. A note for Steve in the future, there are better ways to turn colour images into B&W. You need to play with the filters, or else you'll end up with pretty flat images. I found that out the first time I went to take the images for Geasa and turn them B&W, they weren't nearly as clear and awesome as they were in colour and I knew there had to be a way to fix that.
TL;DR
Remnants is a pretty good mash up a Mecha game and a Post-Apocalyptic game. It pushes you to put yourself at risk in order to improve yourself, and uses a very fast and deadly combat mechanic. It needs a little tweak on the finance end, because the suggestions don't seem to apocalyptic, but that's pretty minor. For 20$ it's a pretty good deal, and a good gateway into Outrider Studio's House system which is called something I can't remember because I don't have the book on me this second.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Origins 2011 - The Obligatory What Happened Post
Origins 2011 this year was an interesting convention for me. I was going, and for the first time most of the companies, and people that I know really well, weren't there. This meant that I would have to find something to do with my time, which mean that I volunteered in official and in unofficial capacities at a lot of places. However, I did get some good games in and I'd like to tell you about those, but first ...
The Origins 2011 Overview!
I think the convention was better this year than it was the year before. It felt like there were more people, which might have been a figment of my imagination, but the dealer hall was a lot more full on many of the days this year than last year. There seemed to be more dealers than before selling a wider variety of goods. I don't know what the official numbers are, and I'm not going to look them up because I'm lazy, but I my anecdotal evidence tells me that it was much improved.
The space is still the space, they haven't done anything original with it. However, it works save for the giant trek from the dealer's room to the RPG section. Again, I have a problem with it because of the aforementioned lazy.
What I did at Origins 2011
First of all, I am pleased to announce that for the first time in a long time over 50% of my games had enough people at them to actually go off! Excitement! Headlines! News Flashes at 11! All that good other loud announcement stuff. There was a lot of Geasa that was ran there, and we had a lot of good times listening to the stories that were built up.
Game 1 - Thursday at 8:00 pm
We had a good time with a Victorian Steampunk game. This was perhaps one of the best Fae I've ever seen in a game. The person playing her was just vicious.
Characters:
Inventor trying to come up with the invention that will make him famous.
Traveling Merchant looking for the person who swindled him out of his childhood memories.
Forest Child looking for her parents.
Traveller, with her clan, looking for justice for her people.
Retired Airship Captain wanting to escape from his previous life and escape the military.
The game ended where the Inventor, and the Retired Airship Captain tried to save the Forest Child (who was the Prime Minister's Illegitimate daughter) from being assassinated by the PM. Unfortunately, the Merchant discovered that she was made from his childhood memories and the only way he could get them back would be to kill the Forest Child.
Best Moments:
The Inventor has his invention go off beautifully in front of his patrons. They offer him 20k on the spot and as he's about to accept it, the Fae of Inspiration tells him not to take it because it will stifle his creativity. He pauses and they up it to 40k in silver. Unfortunately, she had the dice to make him turn it down. It was the best case of screwing someone over I have ever seen.
Game 2 - Saturday at 10:00 am
This game required some talk during the character creation. We ended up having some discussions in regards to appropriation because of what was starting to come out of the character creation. It was a good talk, but ultimately we ended up going forward. We'll see how this ends up being, because we were walking a line here.
Characters:
Prince who needs to hunt a lion to come of age.
The Lion, trying to defend its territory
The Elder Hunter who had the Prince as the pupil.
The British Great White Hunter who was supposed to take the British Nobility through their hunts.
The game ended with the Lion winning. The Lion killed the Great White Hunter and his associate and maimed the Prince who fled home. Pretty straightforward, but good on the lion for winning I say.
Best Moments:
The Spirit of an Eternal Hunger got the Prince to go after the GWH rather than the lion and got him to attack while they were trying to deal with the Pride of lions before they attacked the compound. It helps that this Fae was being played by the player who was playing the GWH.
Game 3 - Saturday at 8:00 pm
We ended up with two games going at the same time. The first time this has happened while running Geasa. It was the only game that I ended up taking pictures of. It was fun because we had two completely different tables. I can't really go into more details because I was jumping from table to table, but there was a lot of fun happening.
Table one had a group of Circus Pirates, the other table was telling the tale about the end of Atlantis. It was immensely fun to listen to, and just a great time had by all it would seem.
What did you buy?
RPGwise I picked up Annalise (which came recommended), Blowback (which I had been intending to buy for a while), and Leverage (in which I got Cam Banks to do the Exact Change Dance, the only time it was worth listening to. There is footage, it will get posted). I was given Remnants, a post apocalyptic mecha RPG written by another Canadian designer, to review so expect that in a couple of weeks.
I picked up Rattus by Z-Man games which has been a lot of fun and got many, many plays at the house already.
Picked up a couple more accessories for the mini department and then came home.
I think it was a really good convention, this Origins 2011. What says you all?
The Origins 2011 Overview!
I think the convention was better this year than it was the year before. It felt like there were more people, which might have been a figment of my imagination, but the dealer hall was a lot more full on many of the days this year than last year. There seemed to be more dealers than before selling a wider variety of goods. I don't know what the official numbers are, and I'm not going to look them up because I'm lazy, but I my anecdotal evidence tells me that it was much improved.
The space is still the space, they haven't done anything original with it. However, it works save for the giant trek from the dealer's room to the RPG section. Again, I have a problem with it because of the aforementioned lazy.
What I did at Origins 2011
First of all, I am pleased to announce that for the first time in a long time over 50% of my games had enough people at them to actually go off! Excitement! Headlines! News Flashes at 11! All that good other loud announcement stuff. There was a lot of Geasa that was ran there, and we had a lot of good times listening to the stories that were built up.
Game 1 - Thursday at 8:00 pm
We had a good time with a Victorian Steampunk game. This was perhaps one of the best Fae I've ever seen in a game. The person playing her was just vicious.
Characters:
Inventor trying to come up with the invention that will make him famous.
Traveling Merchant looking for the person who swindled him out of his childhood memories.
Forest Child looking for her parents.
Traveller, with her clan, looking for justice for her people.
Retired Airship Captain wanting to escape from his previous life and escape the military.
The game ended where the Inventor, and the Retired Airship Captain tried to save the Forest Child (who was the Prime Minister's Illegitimate daughter) from being assassinated by the PM. Unfortunately, the Merchant discovered that she was made from his childhood memories and the only way he could get them back would be to kill the Forest Child.
Best Moments:
The Inventor has his invention go off beautifully in front of his patrons. They offer him 20k on the spot and as he's about to accept it, the Fae of Inspiration tells him not to take it because it will stifle his creativity. He pauses and they up it to 40k in silver. Unfortunately, she had the dice to make him turn it down. It was the best case of screwing someone over I have ever seen.
Game 2 - Saturday at 10:00 am
This game required some talk during the character creation. We ended up having some discussions in regards to appropriation because of what was starting to come out of the character creation. It was a good talk, but ultimately we ended up going forward. We'll see how this ends up being, because we were walking a line here.
Characters:
Prince who needs to hunt a lion to come of age.
The Lion, trying to defend its territory
The Elder Hunter who had the Prince as the pupil.
The British Great White Hunter who was supposed to take the British Nobility through their hunts.
The game ended with the Lion winning. The Lion killed the Great White Hunter and his associate and maimed the Prince who fled home. Pretty straightforward, but good on the lion for winning I say.
Best Moments:
The Spirit of an Eternal Hunger got the Prince to go after the GWH rather than the lion and got him to attack while they were trying to deal with the Pride of lions before they attacked the compound. It helps that this Fae was being played by the player who was playing the GWH.
Game 3 - Saturday at 8:00 pm
We ended up with two games going at the same time. The first time this has happened while running Geasa. It was the only game that I ended up taking pictures of. It was fun because we had two completely different tables. I can't really go into more details because I was jumping from table to table, but there was a lot of fun happening.
Table one had a group of Circus Pirates, the other table was telling the tale about the end of Atlantis. It was immensely fun to listen to, and just a great time had by all it would seem.
What did you buy?
RPGwise I picked up Annalise (which came recommended), Blowback (which I had been intending to buy for a while), and Leverage (in which I got Cam Banks to do the Exact Change Dance, the only time it was worth listening to. There is footage, it will get posted). I was given Remnants, a post apocalyptic mecha RPG written by another Canadian designer, to review so expect that in a couple of weeks.
I picked up Rattus by Z-Man games which has been a lot of fun and got many, many plays at the house already.
Picked up a couple more accessories for the mini department and then came home.
I think it was a really good convention, this Origins 2011. What says you all?
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Dave's Mapper - Amazing stuff
I'm going to be lazy and just link to Rob's blog in regards to Dave's Mapper.
OMG it's amazing and you should check it out. The best part is that it's free.
OMG it's amazing and you should check it out. The best part is that it's free.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Critical!: Go Westerly - Introduction
I read up on what a couple people were saying to Brennan about the introduction to Bulldogs. How it should snag the reader, and give a good sense of what was going to happen inside the book. With that in mind, I'm going to be asking the people who read this blog (and there are more of you now, much to my surprise) what you think of the new and upgrade version of the Introduction.
Note, this is still a draft so any suggestions on how it's written in Jonathan Speak is appreciated.
What is Critical: Go Westerly!?
Tired of boring battles and pointless treasure gathering? Annoyed by the boring, monotonous fantasy worlds that seem to spring up everywhere? If you aren’t, then maybe you should just put down. No, I mean it. Put it down and go back to your magical fantasy worlds where everything is drab and colourless. Surely you can’t handle what goes on inside this book, it just might be too much for you.
If you haven’t put the book down, then you’re either really bad at comprehension or you’ve decided to boldly go forward towards the center of this book. There you will find ribald adventures and slightly off kilter places where you will have meaningful reasons to go after monsters, and kill them for their treasure. Inside is a place where cooking and combat are nestled side by side in education facilities. Take great, unimaginable risks in order to defeat strongly smelling evil monsters. Drink yourself silly in taverns and still manage to adventure successfully. Kill, steal, bribe, and find as much gold as you possibly can to attain power and glory!
Critical: Go Westerly! is ultimately a story about a kingdom that needs a slightly questionable hero. It’s a kingdom filled with highs and lows, good times and bad, ups and downs, friends and foes and many other dualisms with which other Kingdoms are filled. There is the threat of war, Pirates attacking the shore, Monsters to the north and various political factions each looking to win the Stout Throne for itself. It’s up to you, to decide who might pay you the most money to do their dirty work.
Your party of adventurers will go forth, with their Bartender behind them, to create epic tales of monster death, gold collection, and general dungeon delving with the hope that you won’t find yourself waking up in the Hay Loft of the local White Gryphon Tavern establishment wondering where all your stuff is, and how will you ever get it back from the clutches of your backstabbing teammates.
Note, this is still a draft so any suggestions on how it's written in Jonathan Speak is appreciated.
What is Critical: Go Westerly!?
Tired of boring battles and pointless treasure gathering? Annoyed by the boring, monotonous fantasy worlds that seem to spring up everywhere? If you aren’t, then maybe you should just put down. No, I mean it. Put it down and go back to your magical fantasy worlds where everything is drab and colourless. Surely you can’t handle what goes on inside this book, it just might be too much for you.
If you haven’t put the book down, then you’re either really bad at comprehension or you’ve decided to boldly go forward towards the center of this book. There you will find ribald adventures and slightly off kilter places where you will have meaningful reasons to go after monsters, and kill them for their treasure. Inside is a place where cooking and combat are nestled side by side in education facilities. Take great, unimaginable risks in order to defeat strongly smelling evil monsters. Drink yourself silly in taverns and still manage to adventure successfully. Kill, steal, bribe, and find as much gold as you possibly can to attain power and glory!
Critical: Go Westerly! is ultimately a story about a kingdom that needs a slightly questionable hero. It’s a kingdom filled with highs and lows, good times and bad, ups and downs, friends and foes and many other dualisms with which other Kingdoms are filled. There is the threat of war, Pirates attacking the shore, Monsters to the north and various political factions each looking to win the Stout Throne for itself. It’s up to you, to decide who might pay you the most money to do their dirty work.
Your party of adventurers will go forth, with their Bartender behind them, to create epic tales of monster death, gold collection, and general dungeon delving with the hope that you won’t find yourself waking up in the Hay Loft of the local White Gryphon Tavern establishment wondering where all your stuff is, and how will you ever get it back from the clutches of your backstabbing teammates.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Free RPG adendum - Because It really needs to be here
Hey folks, one more quick free game for you to enjoy on this Free RPG weekend.
6. Three Black Crows, Three Dead Men
Brennan wrote a lovely little macabre game where you play three crows talking about the three corpses that are hanging in the gallows. You will use various pieces of the corpses to describe who they were as you play three crows with varying personalities. It takes about 30 minutes to play and is a riot the whole time.
6. Three Black Crows, Three Dead Men
Brennan wrote a lovely little macabre game where you play three crows talking about the three corpses that are hanging in the gallows. You will use various pieces of the corpses to describe who they were as you play three crows with varying personalities. It takes about 30 minutes to play and is a riot the whole time.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Free RPG Day - Ode to Free RPGs and not just whatever was put out ...
Today was free RPG day and while I appreciate the sentiment I think that there's a lot of people who need to understand that it can be free RPG day every single day and not just when people feel that it's an opportunity to provide a marketing push for RPGs as a whole, though really only the ones that can afford to print a whole pile of free material in the hopes that you will pick up their books.
Where to begin? I guess the first thing is to try to see if you have a bias against free RPGs. I know I developed one over the years. I know when I was a teenager and this new-fangled internet thing was still new I used to look everywhere for free RPGs. I was but a youth and had no cash and this looked like it could be used to provide hours of entertainment.
Then I got a job and started being able to buy stuff and soon fell into the siren song of paid for RPGs. Clearly they have to be better than the free alternatives right?
That is not the case at all. In fact, I think there are some brilliant ideas coming out of Free RPGs that people really need to see.
How do I start?
Well there are a couple of good resources to go for Free RPGs. The first is Dr. Rob Lang's Free RPG Blog where he goes over and reviews a wide variety of Free RPGs.
There is also the Free RPG community over at 1km1kt.net where a lot of free games are hosted. There's also a forum where there is chatter by a pile of monkeys about games in general.
There is also an wiki that has a list of all the free games called the Year of Living Free by Sanglorian. Definitly worth a check out.
There are too many of them! I am paralized by choice!
Allow me to make some recommendations.
1. Lady Blackbird
A wonderful setting with quick game play, Lady Blackbird is one of the most popular free rpgs. It's also been hacked a lot, so if you know how to play this one you'll have an idea on how you can play the million or so renditions of others.
2. Metropole Luxury Coffin
A Cyberpunk Future where fashion is king, your face time is your currency and you all dream of finding a way to raise your status enough so that you can leave the Metropole Luxury Coffin Motel. It's a great game, with a great dynamic between the players and the world. It very much deserved to win the Cyberpunk Revival Project contest.
3. Action City
This is a great game if you want to play that Action Movie(tm) kind of game. Seriously, at the end of every major scene there needs to be an explosion of some kind, and it's hard wired in the rules. How do you go wrong with that!?
4. The Droog Family Songbook
What if you mashed up the Sound of Music with A Clockwork Orange? You would get the most amazing bit of music mixed with ultra violence. Protect your favourite things against the invading Nazi hoards in 1995 by relying on fate, or acts of ultra violence.
5. Geasa
Yes this is my own game, and the link is to the free version. If you want a co-operative and competitive storytelling experience then you want to play Geasa. The Free version contains all the rules, not just the ones that might give you a feeling for how the game plays, but all the rules are there. You can even modify them and print your own game since it's under a Creative Commons BY-SA license.
It's free! Check it out.
There you go. Five games to get you started. Anyone else want to suggest their favourite Free RPG?
Where to begin? I guess the first thing is to try to see if you have a bias against free RPGs. I know I developed one over the years. I know when I was a teenager and this new-fangled internet thing was still new I used to look everywhere for free RPGs. I was but a youth and had no cash and this looked like it could be used to provide hours of entertainment.
Then I got a job and started being able to buy stuff and soon fell into the siren song of paid for RPGs. Clearly they have to be better than the free alternatives right?
That is not the case at all. In fact, I think there are some brilliant ideas coming out of Free RPGs that people really need to see.
How do I start?
Well there are a couple of good resources to go for Free RPGs. The first is Dr. Rob Lang's Free RPG Blog where he goes over and reviews a wide variety of Free RPGs.
There is also the Free RPG community over at 1km1kt.net where a lot of free games are hosted. There's also a forum where there is chatter by a pile of monkeys about games in general.
There is also an wiki that has a list of all the free games called the Year of Living Free by Sanglorian. Definitly worth a check out.
There are too many of them! I am paralized by choice!
Allow me to make some recommendations.
1. Lady Blackbird
A wonderful setting with quick game play, Lady Blackbird is one of the most popular free rpgs. It's also been hacked a lot, so if you know how to play this one you'll have an idea on how you can play the million or so renditions of others.
2. Metropole Luxury Coffin
A Cyberpunk Future where fashion is king, your face time is your currency and you all dream of finding a way to raise your status enough so that you can leave the Metropole Luxury Coffin Motel. It's a great game, with a great dynamic between the players and the world. It very much deserved to win the Cyberpunk Revival Project contest.
3. Action City
This is a great game if you want to play that Action Movie(tm) kind of game. Seriously, at the end of every major scene there needs to be an explosion of some kind, and it's hard wired in the rules. How do you go wrong with that!?
4. The Droog Family Songbook
What if you mashed up the Sound of Music with A Clockwork Orange? You would get the most amazing bit of music mixed with ultra violence. Protect your favourite things against the invading Nazi hoards in 1995 by relying on fate, or acts of ultra violence.
5. Geasa
Yes this is my own game, and the link is to the free version. If you want a co-operative and competitive storytelling experience then you want to play Geasa. The Free version contains all the rules, not just the ones that might give you a feeling for how the game plays, but all the rules are there. You can even modify them and print your own game since it's under a Creative Commons BY-SA license.
It's free! Check it out.
There you go. Five games to get you started. Anyone else want to suggest their favourite Free RPG?
Friday, June 17, 2011
West Side Horror - Feedback
GSLamb over at 1km1kt.net had this to say about West Side Horror
I know I laughed out loud with joy when I read that. I'm glad that it turned out, and that the musical bits worked.
Just tried this game with friends last night - very fun.
Our monster, iirc, was an alien-hybridized, hyperintelligent squirrel with a thirst for brain chemicals (Mr. Squeakers). We were all former lab assitants of a genetics project that lost funding (our Professor was Mr Squeakers' first victim), enthralled by Mr Squeakers.
After the third musical number, people got into the swing of things. The second verse of out fourth number had over fifteen lines in it!
Sadly, Mr Squeakers was done-in by his love of amaretto sours (with just a dash of spinal fluids), and we were all brain-wiped in his death throes.
I know I laughed out loud with joy when I read that. I'm glad that it turned out, and that the musical bits worked.
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