The first submission (literally, turned up two days after the
submissions opened) for the expo awards this year comes from a long term
stalwart of the UK games industry, Simon Burley, with his latest game engine,
the Code of Steam and Steel. It’s to be
noted that while this is a complete game engine, it requires a world to work
with, there is no world provided with the rules and no notes on how the author
envisages the system working.
With that in mind, lets take a look at the system that’s been
provided...
Three abilities that can be literally anything at all, these define the
abilities and specialities of the character, what they are good at and what
they aren’t so good at. There is a list
in the back of the book of examples of skills and ideas that can be put forwards
for the character if the players can’t come up things for themselves. These are generated from the numbers one to
six and in turn are used to generate the other three statistics that determine the
characters particular levels of resistance.
None of the judging teams had seen anything like it before, there’s
points based generation systems and there’s freeform systems, but never something
that makes a mix of both.
System is D6 based, uses target numbers that are clearly defined, but
also places a strong emphasis on narrative elements making all the difference
when it comes to the game itself. This
was very popular amongst the more experienced playtesting teams, less so in the
newbies.
There’s not much artwork in the book, and the artwork present is mostly
clip art, it puts across the idea that the universe this was designed for was
steampunk, but it doesn’t go beyond making that point. The front and back covers are the only colour
artwork and while they’re excellent images, the lack of specific artwork and
images was noted by all the teams. Layout
is well done, there aren’t masses of white paper leaving holes in the product,
tables are unobtrusive, and there’s plenty of content on how to run the game,
how to make things interesting, how to build interest villains and plots, and
how to keep players interested.
What there isn’t, however, is a world to play in...
We touched on this at the beginning of the comments, and while the book
makes no apologies for the fact that it is a set of rules with only a single
adventure in them to tide the players over with, the lack of a strong game
world is felt, particularly so when the rules make playing the game so easy. It was the considered opinion of all the
teams that with a fleshed out world, this would be a product that could easily
rival a number of the larger RPG houses, but with the GM needing to transplant
their own world or use the setting from another system, it does present the a
large gap in the appeal for beginners.
On to the Judges comments:
Less than a tenner for a truly original system that combines well dice
and narrative playing, easily on my top ten purchases of the year.
Would be better with a whole world behind it, it’d be nice to know what
world the author was thinking of when he wrote this.
I’d have liked more to start the players off with, but there’s enough for
a good GM to work with.
Excellent game, easy to reference, fast to generate characters and
faster to play, one for my group this year for sure.
