Year: 2016

Kickstarter Watch: Rifts for Savage Worlds

Here’s another Kickstarter project I’m backing: Rifts for Savage Worlds.

From the project description:

All that was, destroyed in atomic fire and arcane Armageddon, brought about a world full of magic and monsters, cybernetic post-humanism, and infinite potential for greatness…and disaster.

This is the terrifying and wonderful world of Rifts®. Originally released in 1990, this “anything and everything” setting features over-the-top action, super-powered heroes, and an exceptionally deep canon of content and story.

I haven’t played Rifts before (because I like something more lightweight than the original Palladium system), but I’m looking forward to trying this version. It’s got power armor, mechs, psionics, sorcerers, cyborgs, super-soldiers, and two words that tend to make Rifts players drool: “mega damage.”

Also, Pinnacle is doing their usual excellent job of adding value to the Kickstarter campaign. They’ve produced five PDFs (so far) containing content previews and Design Diary entries, and the project has cleared lots of stretch goals (33 at this moment). My favorite is the one that expands the page count of the Player’s Guide—but I’m also excited about the added bookmarks because yay bookmarks!

The Rifts for Savage Worlds Kickstarter ends on May 19.

International TableTop Day 2016

For this year’s International TableTop Day, the theme was “Keith plays a lot of games and doesn’t win any of them but has a great time anyway.” (Hey, that was last year’s theme, too!)

Here are the games my friends and I played. (I wanted to find a public venue for some gaming, but couldn’t locate a good one.)

(Image by Geek & Sundry)

Game 1: Tsuro

This was my first time playing Tsuro. It’s been on my list since seeing it played on Tabletop, and I bit this week when I spotted it at my favorite local game store. My son—very much a NON tabletop gamer—joined my wife and me in this first game, and he won! He was proud. See?

See the evil? Do you see it?

I’m happy to have Tsuro in my collection. It’s simple, fast, easy to learn, easy to play, and you can pour as little or as much strategy into it as you wish. Another bonus is that it can support up to 8 players.

Game 2: Cthulhu Wars

This is both a game full of monsters, and a monster of a game. And it’s another that I hadn’t played before today. It’s a conquer-the-world kind of game, only the conquerers are all Lovecraftian Great Old Ones figuring out who gets to own the earth. The pieces (monsters) are large and attractive, and each of the 4 factions in the base game play very differently than the others. I played as the Crawling Chaos. Next time I hope to be Great Cthulhu himself, because his spells and abilities were super cool. Like being able to turn a cultist (basically a pawn) into a Deep One.

NOT a representative photo. The Great Old One figures
are much more massive than these cute lil monsters.

My friend Jeff won this game, because (a) he’s a skilled, strategic player, and (b) his wife Shannon and I spent most of the early game fighting each other, giving Jeff plenty of time to spread his Great Old seed across the map. (Eww.)

Game 3: Poo

I brought back Poo (the game) from GenCon for my friend Jay a year or two ago, and we took this opportunity to fling some more at each other. We tried to talk my son into playing it with us, but he strangely thought that the game sounded silly. (Kids today.)

Here’s Poo on Jay’s fancy gaming table.

Jay won. I thew lots of poo at him, but somehow kept getting it back in my face. He’s SO GOOD at flinging poo. (I should probably mention this is a card game, not a LARP.)

Game 4: Villains of the Multiverse

This one is Jay’s latest acquisition, an expansion to the excellent Sentinels of the Multiverse. In this variant, each player manages a villain deck in addition to their hero deck. In theory, this is a team of super-villains who are individually weaker than the single villains you fight in the base game. In our experience, each one of the villains nearly kicked our super-asses.

Early in the game, before I was crushed. (Of course I’m not bitter!)

I was knocked out of the game early, because the villain I chose (Greazer) was an intergalactic bounty hunter whose only goal was to take ME out. We decided the best thing for the team would be to let him do so, while we focused damage on the other villains—because when Greazer takes out his target, he effectively leaves the game. The other players successfully defeated the remaining villains, but it was close; I think the other heroes ended the game with about 3 hit points each.

Game 5: More Tsuro

We squeezed in another game of Tsuro because I wanted Jeff, Shannon, and Jay to try it; they hadn’t been around for game 1. Logan won again!

Game 6: Epic Spell Wars of The Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre

And at last we come to my current favorite game! This is another one I learned about on Tabletop, and that episode can demonstrate the game better than I could describe it here. But I do want to praise the game’s chaotic nature.

That tower has no function.

The game’s premise is that you’re assembling spell components from the cards in your hand and casting them to hurt your opponents, and I love how fun it is to pick a few cards that might end up helping OR hurting you. I don’t worry much about the consequences of a bad play in this game, because even when you lose, you get a “dead wizard” card that gives you a boost when you start over in the next round.

A full three-card spell.

We played two rounds of this one. I didn’t win either, but I did get to knock Jay out. And that, my friends, is sometimes all I need.

The board at top is my character. The cards at
bottom are treasures. Made just for me.

RPG Overviews For New Players

I’m putting together a high-level overview of a few RPG systems for some players who may join my group. (Yay, new blood!) We’ll talk this over more when we get together in person, of course, but I thought this might help get them thinking about their options. (Their options, in this case, being games I think will be friendly to newcomers, that I either haven’t played recently or haven’t gotten enough of.)

Here’s the skeleton of my overview:


Game Title
When and Where Are We?
What’s the Genre?
What’s the Premise?
Who Am I? 
What Will I Do? 

And here are some examples:

Deadlands

When and Where Are We? An alternate Wild West
What’s the Genre? Dark historical fantasy
What’s the Premise? In 1863 history diverged from what we know, resulting in a “Weird West” featuring monsters, magic, steampunk…and horrors.
Who Am I? A gunfighter, mad scientist, shaman, sorcerer, brave, or other Western adventurer.
What Will I Do? Fight zombies and spirits. Use Ghost Rock to power weird technology. Cast hexes. Play cards.
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space
When and Where Are We? All of time and space
What’s the Genre? Science fiction
What’s the Premise? A Doctor Who game spawned from the current TV series
Who Am I? The Doctor or one of his companions from the show
What Will I Do? Solve mysteries. Run from monsters. Spout scientific jargon. Explore the cosmos. Meet historical figures.
Edge of the Empire

When and Where Are We? The Star Wars galaxy, during the original trilogy.
What’s the Genre? Science fiction / space opera
What’s the Premise? A Star Wars game set during the original trilogy, but seen from the point of view of wretched hives of scum and villainy.
Who Am I? A human, alien, or droid on the fringes of galactic society, including bounty hunters, smugglers, and hired guns.
What Will I Do? Earn money on legally questionable jobs; explore the Outer Rim of the galaxy in your ship; evade crime bosses who loaned you money; get caught between the Rebels and the Empire.

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

When and Where Are We? Modern-day Earth
What’s the Genre? Superheroes
What’s the Premise? Marvel superheroes doing their thing!
Who Am I? Your favorite Marvel hero: Daredevil! Scarlet Witch! Spider-Man! Captain America!
What Will I Do? Fight supervillains. Save the innocent. Protect your secret identity.

Pugmire

When and Where Are We? Far future (but medieval) Earth
What’s the Genre? Light fantasy
What’s the Premise? Long after Man has vanished from the world, intelligent animals have built a medieval civilization.
Who Am I? A good dog of any breed, specializing in fighting, using magic, or sneaking around.
What Will I Do? Protect the kingdom of Pugmire. Fight monsters and bandits and cats. Seek out relics left over from the Ages of Man.

The Strange

When and Where Are We? Modern-day Earth
What’s the Genre? Science fiction & fantasy
What’s the Premise? Some people on modern-day Earth can travel to strange alternate worlds, many of which are based on works of fiction.
Who Am I? Someone able to visit the other worlds and manifest different powers and abilities on each one.
What Will I Do? Explore alternate realities. Defend the Earth from invaders. Interact with aliens and fictional characters.

Did I leave anything out? Got any suggestions for changes? I considered a line about “What’s Unique About this Game?” but I was undecided about that.

Kickstarted: “I Am Zombie: Toxicity”

I’ve heard fellow gamers complain that, because there are so many Kickstarter projects being created, it’s hard to find the really good gaming ones. So I figured when I spot a notable one, I should blab about it.

Well, a really cool one started today. Running through May 16, I Am Zombie: Toxicity is a stand-alone RPG spawned from the fertile, infected loins of the original I Am Zombie (itself Kickstarted in 2015).

It’s hard to pick the coolest-looking thing about Toxicity, but I’m going to anyway: It’s set in the 1970s! Indeed, the creators (Make-Believe Games) are spinning this as a rare old-school RPG from the ’70s that was recently rediscovered and reprinted. The setting is described as “1970s grindhouse underworld.” Yes, please.

As in the original I Am Zombie, player characters ARE zombies. (Oh, you probably figured that out from the title.) The game uses cards instead of character sheets, promising low prep time and a simplified game experience. This time around, the action is set underground, “in a terrifying underworld hidden beneath our largest metropolises.”

The project is nearly at its funding goal as I type this, which funds three books (core rules, antagonists, and locations) plus the “ID cards” that characters are made from. Stretch goals include more cards, a narrator screen, and additional story seeds.

Go check out the I Am Zombie: Toxicity Kickstarter page–it’s a beautiful one, and filled with details.

(Source: Kickstarter | Image source: Make-Believe Games)

Factions You Won’t See in Predation

Smash-em-Up, Shanna, Smash-em-Up!

I recently mentioned the Monte Cook Games kickstarter “Worlds of the Cypher System” (expiring soon!) and its Gods of the Fall setting. Another of the three included settings is Predation, by Shanna Germain:

An asteroid will soon wipe out all life on earth. You know this—and you know when—because it’s in the history books your grandparents brought back to the Cretaceous period with them. Now your small society is trapped in prehistory, desperate to find a way back to your time. But at least you’re not alone. You have tech, weapons, vehicles, and science from the future—you even have the ability to bioengineer the dinosaurs around you. Can you use these tools to survive a dangerous world on the brink of extinction?

Is that the sound of thunder you hear?

I know, so much potential, right? Predation’s designer, Shanna Germain, also wrote a cool blog post about two of the groups in this setting: SATI and the Butterflies. (That needs to be a band name.) These writeups gave me ideas for more cool prehistoric factions! I’m sure Shanna will love them.

Sleestaks

While Space and Time, Interglobal (SATI) is all cozy inside the group’s time-travel bunkers, and the Butterflies are camping out in the trees or mud or whatever, a group called the Sleestaks are living in style in a place they call the Lost City. Hear that hissing sound? That means “Go away or we’ll eat you” in Sleestak. These handsome reptilian fellows don’t go out in the daytime, but at night they’ll be eager to find some unprotected humans they might take back home to sacrifice to their god.

Sleestak guard: level 2, intellect tasks as level 1; Armor 1; crossbow attack inflicts 3 points of damage; short-range immobilizing net attack

Silurians

I hope you’re not thinking there’s only room for one batch of humanoid lizards in the prehistoric world, because a species known as the Silurians is also on the scene. Waaaay in the future (1970, man) they’ll cause problems for a time traveler, but in our dino-setting they’re still debating whether it’s time to go into hibernation or not. Considering themselves to be the masters of Earth, the Silurians don’t like the idea of sharing their planet with a group of time-traveling upstarts. With their advanced knowledge of genetic engineering, it’s possible the Silurians will give the humans a taste of their own medicine and perform experiments to see how versatile the human genome can be.

Silurian warrior: level 3, science-related tasks as level 4; Armor 2; immediate-range tongue attack inflicts 1 point of speed damage; venom causes the target to mutate on a failed Might defense roll; carries 1 random cypher

Flintstones

The SATI folks might be pretty proud of their time-travel base and cybernetics and iPods and such, but the true masters of technology in this era are the Flintstones faction. Led by an inscrutable warrior called Fred, the Flintstones have cobbled together an empire featuring engineering feats such as bird-tech audio sampling, massive-scale quarry excavation, and foot-powered cars. The Flintstones are not aggressive, but they can be protective of their scientific advances—and Fred himself has a legendary temper. Members of other factions have learned to approach the Flintstones with caution…and a giant offering of ribs.

Bamm-Bamm, warrior of the Rubble clan: level 1; strength tasks as level 6; club attack inflicts 6 points of damage