Are nice notebooks intimidating...?

I've always had a problem with notebooks, and I suspect I'm not alone, because my problem with notebooks is that when you have a really nice one, you find yourself afraid to write in it, because you don't want the notebook to be anything less than perfect all the way through, and leaving corrections or having to remove a page in some way make the notebook less perfect...

Or at least reminds everyone else who might read it that you made a mistake...

And so when I found something that was both a nice notebook and one that I wouldn't be worried about writing in, I was suitably cheerful...

Enter the Zlyc refillable journal.

They come in two sizes, pocket and full sized, and the basic format of them is similar to that of the midori notebooks that came into vogue some time ago.  The shell of the journal is a leather cover with an elastic band placed in the binding.

And then another placed lengthways through that band, into which any type of journal can be inserted

And changed about if you prefer

or swapped out completely...

This appeals to my OCD on a number of levels, not least of which because the notebooks themselves are cheap and cheerful, so I don't mind writing notes and scribbling things in them, because I know that this particular book will never run out, I'll just keep adding things to it.

What of everyone else, favourite books that make you want to write in them...?

Expo Awards Day 5 - River of Heaven

 

The next game in the awards is River of Heaven, written by John Ossoway and published by D101 Games.

Set in the 28^th century, it’s about the ongoing story of humanities struggle to find their place amongst the stars.  The system is not far removed from BRP, with options to generate characters using points based generation as well as random generation, and a wealth of character options, special abilities, enhancements and other goodies to take on the merry jaunt through the stars.

The book is mostly about the rules of the universe, there are separate sections for characters, weapons, enhancements, vehicles and starships, so many that you would not be likely to need to make a rule up for any given situation.  With so much space devoted to the rules of the game, you’d expect that comparatively little would be given over to the background of the world that the characters find themselves in.  However, this game makes sure that you have absolutely everything you need, from NPC stats to vehicle build rules, to the nature of what worlds are out there, where you’ll find them and what you’ll find on them.

While it’s good to have all the information that you need for a universe to hand, beyond a few pages of adventure hooks, there wasn’t any part of it that hinted at a bigger picture, nothing that drew the judges in to want to play in that world.  For the experienced GM’s, the amount of information and background presented made it very easy to build games and make them compelling, but for the beginners, something to get them into the game beyond the few pages of plot hooks would have been very appreciated.

In a recurring theme through most of this years entries, there isn’t much in the way of artwork in the book, layout is excellent and the binding of the books is very good, but most of the pages are taken up in large amounts of text.  Given the way the book is presented, indicating that you can and will find absolutely anything out there, the lack of visual specifics doesn’t hamper the feel of the setting as much as some thought it might.

And with that, to the Judges comments

The writings good, there’s plenty of atmosphere here but it has the feel of a menu driven universe rather than a living breathing construct...

Liked a lot of the ideas presented, there’s the feel of Iain M Banks culture to it and it wouldn’t take much work to make a good campaign...

It’s presented very much like a working universe, rather than something where space ships and ray guns are special things, it feels like you need to work for your place in the game, rather than being something special, and that by itself makes it stand out from other games...

Expo RPG Awards Day 4 – The Long Con

The next offering for the awards is published by Innsmouth House Press and written by Adam Gauntlett.  It’s a scenario for Trail of Cthulhu that starts out with the players assisting someone with with the setting up of a Long Con. For those not familiar with the work of Grifters and their ilk, a Long Con is any form of confidence trick that is set up not with the aim of getting small amounts of money from many people, but with getting a lot of money from one particularly rich target.

This of course requires that the players are open to a little Grand Larceny...

Which of course we all know that players are usually up for...

So, philosophical quandaries notwithstanding, and without giving away anything of the scenario, what’s to be said about the book?

It’s well written, there’s been a good level of research into the areas details, the characters are three dimensional, and there’s good reasons why everyone is doing what they’re doing, so from a story point of view, it holds together very well.  There’s a number of ways to get the characters more involved in the plot and there’s a lot of thought gone into what might cause problems for the GM and how to get around them.  This makes the scenario very easy to use, especially for GM’s just starting out on the path.

In terms of layout and artwork, the book is in landscape format and comes spiral bound, allowing easy use of the book at the table. This divided the judges, with some liking the ease of use and some preferring a more solid feel to a book.  The layout has a lot of white space in it, with some pages being laid out in full page format but most pages being laid out in two columns.  Artwork is minimal and there is a note in the back of the book indicating that all the artwork in the book (with the exception of the cover) has been sourced through archive images or other free sources.  While the images chosen are appropriate to what is being described at the time, there are a few instances where original artwork would have made a huge difference.   That said, there were a number of very well produced handouts included with the scenario, all of which helped to set the scene for the players.

And with that, on to the judges comments

I liked the scenario, good mix of misdirection and subterfuge from all angles, the front cover does give things away a little though...

Rare to find something in Landscape format, I think it might have been better as an A5 book, felt a little insubstantial even though there was plenty of material inside...

Good scenario, excellent handouts, I’ll be looking for the next one...

Expo Awards Day 3 - Mutant Year Zero

So, the world ended, there’s not much left of anything, food’s running out, there is no brighter tomorrow, it’s down and it’s dropping fast…

Welcome to Mutant: Year Zero

Modiphius’ latest release is a departure from games they’ve done before, it’s not about big damn heroes, crossing the multiverse or punching Cthulhu out, it’s a story of day to day struggle in a world that’s gone bad.  The players take the part of those who are left following the cataclysm that ended the world as they knew it, but they’re not the same as the people who once inhabited that world, they’re changed, they’re different…

They’re Mutants…

The background to the book is covered in less than two pages, and in any other game, this would be a woeful lack of material to work with, but that’s where this game comes into its own. The whole point of this game is to look to the future, not wonder what happened in the past, it’s about finding hope in the dark places, keeping your own people alive, and trying to find some measure of safety in a world gone wrong. 

It jumps straight in with Character Creation,  all the players are mutants, each of them given a single (random) mutation that is theirs to use.  It’s entirely possible that characters will end up being something that their players did not at first envisage, but that works with the way the game is set up, if there were elements of choice in anything the players were doing, it would take away something from the feel the game gives.

System is D6 based, certain numbers yield certain results, either good or bad, and multiple dice colours are used to represent the different influences on the dice roll.  Each game starts with the threat of the week, rolled randomly by the GM and then worked up from there.  If the characters succeed, their successes can affect what happens the week after and these successes can be used to build the world around the characters.

In terms of artwork and Layout, there’s good atmospheric pieces throughout, the front cover clearly sets the scene, as do the maps on the inside cover, there’s no repeated artwork throughout the entire book and most of the scenes depicted convey well the idea that’s being pushed.  Full colour throughout with high production values that justify the £35 price tag.

The system does come with optional dice and cards, but the judges looking at this were using regular dice and the tables within the book rather than the optional extras

And on to the Judges comments

There’s a feel to it unlike anything else I’ve played, I can see that it’s not about the character but about the community, you don’t get attached to goodies and treasure in the same way…

Not sure about the long term playability of it, but it’s been great as an isolated game…

I like that’s it’s always forwards, there’s no pause in the game, no respite, it drives itself and it makes you hang on to try and steer it.

Expo Awards Day 2 - Sleeper – Orphans of the Cold War

The second entry to the awards this year has been a number of years in development and was one of the RPG entries in the Dragons Den at Expo last year.  Sleeper takes place in a world where the various supersoldier programs that were running at the time of the cold war didn’t come to fruition while the war was still on.

But they’re up and about now the war is over…

Good premise and written in lively style, the background paints an engaging picture of soldiers with powers beyond those of mortal men engaging in rolling battles over objectives that not even they know the relevance of.  There is an interesting range of powers available through the book and many of them are anything but mundane in their nature.  An example of this would be (and every group picked it out, which is why it’s appearing in these notes) Entrail Burst, wherein the character gets to try and attack the enemy with their own entrails…Or tie them up, using their own entrails…or…

You get the picture…

With such imagery present, it can’t be said that the game is for children, and there is a mature players advisory in the opening pages that is well earned by a short read through the background material.  With this in mind, the teams moved on to the rules and found something that polarised the opinions of the judges.  The basic rules for skills are roll versus target number with a variety of modifiers, but it was the combat rules where the difference of opinion occurred.  The combat rules are designed to take place on a board, with modifiers for almost every conceivable possibility that could enter into the equation, and rather than flowing quickly as the single skill roll for the main skills does, the modifiers system does slow combat down to the point where plotting distance and tactical play take up a good portion of each combat round.

Those who were very much in with the flowing nature of the basic skill tree and the background found this to be a little jarring when it came to switching out of Roleplaying mode and going into Wargame mode (to put it in perspective, there’s less rules in Warhammer 40k than there are here), whereas those who saw the game as an extension of how these agents would be trained to fight thought that it was an excellent addition and well matched the idea of the game.

On the subject of artwork, the teams were aware that the copy sent to us for the awards was an advance release, and that the finished product may have more artwork in it, but there was a level of disappointment after seeing the excellent front and rear covers to find that most of the artwork in the book was either of the characters, or of a single scene that gets repeated at another point in the book.  Layout is otherwise well done, plenty of content in the near three hundred pages.

And with that, we’re on to the Judges comments

Fantastic premise, plenty of atmosphere, doesn’t flinch from presenting the world as a dark place full of shadows.

Not sure If it’s a tactical game with roleplaying elements or a roleplaying game with tactical elements, It’s possible to do combat without the board, but it doesn’t work as well.

If there’s going to be a miniatures game to support this, I’ll be buying it, but a lot of crunch for an RPG.

Expo Awards Day 1 - The Code of Steam and Steel

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. 

UK Games Expo RPG Awards 2015

And the list is as follows

The Code of Steam and Steel by Simon Burley
Mutant Year Zero by Modiphius Games
You are the Hero by Jonathan Green
The Long Con by Adam Gauntlett
River of Heaven by John Ossoway
Hellfrost Rassilon Expansion 2 by Triple Ace Games
Sleeper: Orphans of the Cold War by Death Spiral Games

As always, we keep the judging on five different criteria

Quality - Not just the amount of shiny art in the book, but how well it's been laid out, is the artwork appropriate to the subject matter, does the book feel like it's going to fall apart...  Does it feel like something that'll still be intact in ten years time...?

Theme/Originality - Is it the latest clone of a clone, or is it something new, something that makes a big difference in the RPG world, is it something everyone's seen before with a new skin...?

Balance - Is the game balanced, are there equal reasons to want to play the different character types, or does everyone want to be a Black Numenorean...?

Playability - As well as the balance, does the game play well, do the rules get in the way of the setting or do they complement it, when someone says it's innovative, do they mean that it's never been done like that or that it's never been done like that for a reason...?

Value - With costs always going up, the question of value is always asked, if you're putting something out for a tenner, it stands to reason that you won't have the production values and quality of something that costs a hundred, but regardless of anything else, is this something that is worth what's being asked for it?

First commentary is starting tomorrow, with one a day till we're through all the entries, as always, the public votes made at Expo on the day make a big difference in who eventually wins...

Day one on the BBW trail...

And while the headline will probably have got a whole bunch of people here expecting something completely different, It's nothing so exotic...

BBW in this case is Big B'stards Walking, something that I suspect will be done a great deal more in the months to follow, because I (and at least one like minded soul) are looking to keep moving and improve things in general whilst avoiding the perils that come with having to sit down as much as we do.  With this in mind, a bunch of walking was suggested, and we thought that to make things a little better, it should be done with the idea of doing it more often, and herein lies the problem for a number of Big B'stards, because...

1:  Walking isn't very interesting, the scenery goes by too slowly and it often rains...
2:  If you're walking and you're built like me, it's more like a merry amble, and while that's fine for me, any lycra clad fitness nutjobs are likely to be complaining that I'm going too slow...
3:  It's a problem for most Big B'stards to explain that, yes, you are breathing more heavily, and yes, you may look a little pink, but you're not falling over, and you're still going.  The reason you're breathing more heavily is because you're pulling more of you around, and the reason you've gone a little pink is because you're built this way and that keeps you insulated... It doesn't mean that we're having a bad time, but it's an irritation when everyone keeps asking you if a cardiac is on the way...if you're walking with another Big B'stard, they know the score and you don't get stupid questions :)
4:  Did I mention it often rains...

So with this in mind, we decided to take a walk around Newmillardam in West Yorkshire, the low road for the first day, with the idea of building up as time goes by, set off around at a good clip, him wearing sensible walking gear, me having turned up in a bomber jacket (in summer, on a hot day, error...), got halfway around and found that they'd changed a few things, specifically the addition of a wooden walkway into the boggy areas...

Clearly this was a sign...

So we wandered down to investigate and found that it went deep into the forest and ended up in a platform that looked like the point to defend, against...wild ducks perhaps....

and then back out, whereupon we agreed that truly righteous nerf wars could be held here, you'd just have to worry about footing the bill for overloading the water with blue darts.  Given that both I and my fellow walker are both writers, we spent a good hour taking a stroll around the lake and beyond into the fields and then back, and all the way talked of writing things and projects and ideas, which is always helped when you encounter things that fire the imagination...

Yes, that is a house built on the side of the lake with the lower levels submerged...

Cue the pair of us trying to find a way in...

In all, we didn't get round in record time, I'm sure it's possible to run in ten minutes what we took an hour to walk around, but that wasn't the point of the walk, enjoyed it greatly and we've agreed to do it again in the near future, at which point there'll be another post from the BBW club...

Longcon - A new All Day gaming convention in England - Convention details...

A short while back, I mentioned the possibility of making a convention that celebrated the longer games, the games that you spent all weekend playing and didn't have to run between slots to get to the next game because each day was all about the one game...

Things have moved on a little since then...

Finally managed to get a holding page put up for the convention and some of the games loaded in, with the full details of where the convention is going to be, how you book, where you can stay, and where you can ask other questions, it'll be changing when we get the domain sorted, but for now, it's at...

http://doddherderofcats.wix.com/longcon

Any questions, we're going live in a week with all the other games in place and the booking system going live, ask away...

Cthulhu Masters at Expo

Just a sneak peek for those who aren't watching the facebook updates at Expo, some of the prizes for the Cthulhu Masters this year.

Because no prize is complete without a box...

And where would Cthulhu be without sinister Idols...

Or Cryptic Letters...

Or photos of things that may never have happened...

And with great glee, I can report that Yog Sothoth have kindly sponsored the masters this year with a copy of The Express Diaries for every person who enters the competition this year.

Booking for the tournament opens at 22:00 this evening and places are sure to go fast

And I've let the blog go a little...

Problem inherent when you're organising so many things, some of the things that aren't immediately essential go by the wayside, but I need to start coming back to this anyway, and in doing so, I might get some of the impetus back.

But not tonight, tonight I sleep alone, for Tiny wife is in deepest darkest London, and my world is a emptier place without her...

So this is John Dodd, in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, and Goodnight England, Wherever you are...

Star Realms - Game Review

I’m a latecomer to Deckbuilding games in general, it was only last year that I came across Dominion, and that was my introduction to the concept.  I have to say that as far as game ideas go, I really like that both players are working from the same deck and have access to exactly the same resources at the beginning of the game.  The only problem I ever had with Dominion was that you didn’t really know who was winning till you get to the end of the game and tally up the points, so you don’t tend to adjust your strategy to reflect that.

There is no such problem with Star Realms

Star Realms is a two player deck building game that has all the cards you’re going to need in the base set, it works on a similar premise whereby players buy cards from the centre of the table and build their deck up to do what they want, but instead of victory points being placed within the deck, the winning criteria for this game is reducing the opponents Authority (Hit points) to zero.

 

And as with all Authority, it can be overturned...

The mechanics of the game are almost identical to those of Dominion, players start with two vipers and eight scouts, vipers do a single point of combat (damage) and scouts provide a single point of trade.  Players start with a hand of five cards, they get to buy as many cards as they can afford in the turn, then play any combat effects, then discard all their remaining cards and draw another five.

There are some subtle difference to Dominion in the way the game plays that suit the style of the game very well, the first of which is that there’s no limit to the number of cards that you can buy in a turn, if you have the trade points available, you can keep buying till you run out.  There’s a pile of cards separate to the main deck which is made up of Explorer ship cards.  These are worth two points of trade rather than the one of the scouts, so there’ll always be things that can be bought at the beginning of the game, even if the cards drawn from the main deck are initially too expensive.

The main deck consists of ships and stations, with each faction having a particular focus towards how that faction is played and what it will work well with.  No card has a play cost, if they’re in your hand, you can play them, ships go into your discard pile when you’re done with the turn, but stations remain to be used again and again.  The only defensive measures you’ve got against incoming fire from the other player comes in the form of outposts that absorb a certain amount of damage before being destroyed.  When destroyed, the outposts go back in your deck and will eventually come around again, but you have to balance carefully your offense and defense. 

Most cards have more than one function to them.  All cards have a main effect, and that effect occurs whenever you play the card, but many cards also have an Ally effect and/or a scrap effect.  Ally effects come into play if you have another card of the same faction out at the same time, and scrap effects can be used at any time, but to use it, you have to put the card in the main deck discard pile, not your own, so you only ever get to use it once.

The trade pile always has five cards in it at any time, as soon as one is bought, it is replaced with another from the main deck, and there’s no danger that the main deck will run out before one side has battered the other one into space dust.  

There are four factions within the basic decks, each one having a different style of play

The Blob faction (Green) are an organic battle fleet that works by delivering lots of damage and drawing additional cards with which to press the advantage.

The Trade Federation (Blue) are the main defensive fleet, their ships offer lots of trade but also raise your authority level so that you can keep going even though you’re taking hits from other fleets.

The Star Empire (Yellow) are a direct attack fleet that don’t deal the same levels of damage as the Blob fleet, but have additional damage in the form of causing the opponent to discard cards from their hand so that their next turn will be reduced in what they can do.

The Machine Cult (Red) are all about efficiency, most of their cards have the ability to remove cards from your deck or discard pile to streamline its efficiency, the larger of their ships allow you to remove things from the trade pile in the middle of the table.  

It’s very difficult to build a deck that’s completely one of the factions, the trade deck being properly shuffled tends to have ships of all different types coming up, so working out which combinations work for you is an important thing early on, diversifying will only give you a deck that doesn’t work too well, but most decks with two factions in them can be very efficient.

The artwork on the cards is excellent, all brightly coloured vistas with a clear idea of how big the vessel you’re playing is, and I don’t know about everyone else, but I like the idea that even though all the cards are the same size, you get the idea that you’re playing something massive when you slap a dreadnought down, far more so than you do when you’re playing a viper.

Playwise, there’s no one faction that’s stand-out overpowered, and there’s a lot of work been put into the balance of it.  There’s expansions for the game that I haven’t picked up yet, but I’m sure I will be, and while I know that a self contained game doesn’t need expansions, I can’t help but think that this game could easily support more factions (even if the trade deck replaced one faction for another completely), and that the game would only benefit from greater diversification.

Available directly from White Wizard Games at http://www.starrealms.com/ they also have an app for playing the game when there’s no one else about.

Why things shouldn't be spun out, but kept fresh and live...

I don’t read the various Horus Heresy novels, I started out reading them with the best of intentions, but it was eight years back when I started, and after the first few, I came to the realisation that like many things games workshop, they were just going to milk it for all the money they could before bringing it to an end.

It’s not that I object to them making money off their own IP, I just have a problem when it’s something that everyone already knows about, everyone knows how it started, and everyone knows how it ends, and they knew that more than twenty years ago.

Especially after how it was first told...

Behold White Dwarf 131…

Without question, my favourite issue of White Dwarf ever, mostly for the fact that it had two of the best pieces of fiction that I’ve ever read in it, and another reason, that was only to become apparent in later years…

The first piece of fiction was The Emporer and Horus, by William King, which detailed the last hours of the Horus Heresy, when the Emporer took the fight to Horus and nearly paid with his life…

It took two pages…

There was nothing wrong with that bit of fiction, it was tight, sharp, and encompassed all the things it needed to do, it conveyed all the emotion that was going on and the gravity of the situation, it conveyed the end of a struggle that had been waged across a galaxy…

It took two pages…

As of right now, the Horus Heresy saga spans 13093 pages, not all of which is immediately related to the events of the Heresy, some of the books deal with minor incidents out in the middle of nowhere, some of them deal with events that had no apparent (as of now) bearing on the events of the heresy, and some of them are very relevant to the heresy, but take a while to get to the point.  In all, there’s a number of other books planned, and most of the GW employees that I’ve spoken to either have no clue when it’s going to be finished, or aren’t allowed to tell people when it’s going to be finished (much in the same way that you can’t refer to mark 6 armour as womble armour anymore), so it’s going to keep rolling till they announce that the next book is going to be the last.

And you can be sure that it’ll be written by Dan Abnett, which is a good thing.

But I can’t help but feel that this could have been done tighter, sharper, and then the books could have moved on to other, newer fiction, on subjects that we don’t know about, maybe even…

Something original…

  

Which brings me to the other piece of fiction in this issue, Inquisitor Kryptman by Lindsey D Le Doux Paton, which detailed Kryptmans encounter with something that resembled a Grabber Slasher (as they used to be known), and the final moment of the story, where they make contact with the Scythes of the Emporer, and the contact is too much…

“Warn them, WARN THEM, the tyranids are coming, THE TYRANIDS ARE COMING…”

More emotion packed into one statement than the rest of the story put together, and it’s things like that that stay with you when you read, I’ve never forgotten either of those stories, nor the artwork that went with them, and they mean more to me than all thirty of the novels that have been brought out since, because they resonated with me, and since that point, I sought to make my writing more like that, because words are like anything else, a small number of the right ones will make up for any number of the wrong ones…

And I believe that with all my heart, if people spent more time doing new, original things, and inspiring people to buy them because they were interesting and new, the world would be a better place, and stagnation would be a thing of the past, it’s not as easy as making something 6547 times longer than the original story, but it works better…

Rant over…

The other thing about this episode though, is the featured store in the front cover, and a man I was to come to know well…

Although I’m not sure about the hairstyle, reckon he looks better now :)