Kingbeast's Lair

The What’s Cool seminar is a soapbox where Ken Hite (RPG Luminary) and Darren Watts (Hero Games CEO) get to talk about some RPG product from the last year that they felt were particularly “cool”. From past experience with this seminar I can tell you that these two really understand “cool” as it relates to role-playing products. 😉 Here are some products that each mentioned with some editorial comments from me. I’m sorry if the facts for some of these are not 100% accurate…I am not familiar with some of these products.

Ken’s List

• Sweet Agatha – Both Ken AND Darren had this at the #1 spot on their list. They admired the production values and loved how the game changed each time it was played.
• Urban Fantasy Hero – This was tagged as Ken’s best suppliment of the year. It can be used for Dresden to Buffy to Shadowrun.
• Hunter : The Vigil – Ken thought this was the best retread of the year. He mentioned that the book really hits the right spot when it comes to hunting all those angst ridden goth types presented in other White Wolf Products.
• Mysteries Of Candlewick Manor – According to Ken this is answers the question as to what people are supposed to do with Monsters and Other Childish Things.
• Zombie Cinema – Movie zombie game that comes in a VHS box. Really neat marketing ploy. The game has a token mechanic that might be found in a board game. Really captures the feel of zombie movies.
• Mutant City Blues – On my prompting Ken and Darren talked about Mutant City Blues. This is a new product from Pelgrane that was sold out in about an hour at DunDraCon. Mutant City Blues is a Justice League meats Homicide setting based on the Gumshoe engine.

Darren’s List

• Sweet Agatha – Ditto.
• A Dirty World – Darren listed this as his pick for the most creative mechanic. I’ll try to quickly explain the concept…it is really neat. Characteristics of the PC are grouped into diametric pairs. For example, Compassion and Wrath. (I’m not sure if these are the real stat names but I’ll try and explain usnig these terms.) Each stat pair has a sliding scale of 5 dots. If Compassion is 3 then Wrath is 2. If your Wrath goes up then it makes it easier to take out your agressions on someone but harder to be compassionate. These can slide during a session to reflect how a noir hero changes through the course of the adventure. Really neat idea.
• Mouse Guard – Darren listed this as his pick for the best adaptation of a property. The Mouse Guard RPG is written by Luke Crain of Burning Wheel fame. This is a beautiful hard cover book with art from the Mouse Guard creator/artist. It will not surprise anyone to learn that the mechanics are a simplified version of Burning Wheel.
• Summerland – Darren thought the background for Summerland was very evocative although he did not particularly care for the mechanics. At a high level the setting is post-apocalyptic. Plants overgrow the world then begin to draw in people. The PC can resist the call because they do not fit into the world for some reason…what happens when they begin to fit?
• Tour de Lovecraft – This is Ken’s companion to Lovecraft stories. It is full of insight and great Ken Hite mojo.

-== What is it? ==-

Fudge 10th Anniversary Edition is the latest print release of the Fudge universal role-playing game system from Grey Ghost Press. As a universal system it is intended to be used for modeling many different genres. Fudge was previously an acronym for Freeform Universal Do-It-Yourself Game Engine.

The book has a color hard cover and an entirely black and white interior. The book is full sized and is 319 pages in length.? I have been running my first Terra Incognita Fudge based campaign now for roughly a year. I started playing Fudge by buying Terra Incognita and this book. I have read the book cover to cover.

-== What I Like ==-

I think my favorite thing about Fudge is the simplicity during play. Fudge is a very fast system. Combats move quickly and player actions are very easy to model. If something isn’t clear in the rules you do as the rules suggest and “fudge it”.? This is pretty easy to do once the fundamentals of the systems are learned. At a high level Fudge is a success based system where two results are compared. The person with the highest result wins.

As the system is universal once learned your players can move with you from campaign to campaign and all they have to worry about are any rule changes you plan on making.

As a GM I love the ease in creating bad guys. My Terra Incognita game has a heavy monster hunting flair and I find it very simple to make even the most complex beasties in minutes with only minor cracks of the book.

-== What I Don’t Like ==-

One key thing to remember about Fudge is part of the old acronym…”Do-It-Yourself”. That is really key. Fudge not only gives the GM the tools for changing the rules they really expect it. They expect the GM to set skill lists and stats. They expect the GM to choose a character creation method. Etc. For the “tinkerer type” GMs this is a really great thing but for others it may at first be daunting. I have a LOT of experience with the Hero System but in my opinion Fudge is another rung down the “GM as game designer ladder”. In the future I plan to do an entire article about universal systems and Fudge will be a part of it for sure.

As laid out the combat system works alright but it has some strange bits that take some time to get used to. For example, when two targets attach eachother in HTH combat they role against eachother. The one who roles highest hits and the one who rolled lower misses. The guy who hits does more damage based on the differences in the rolls. On the surface this is simple but in play it really shows differentitation issues. If someone is really good with knives there might be no chance for the other person to ever hit the target. Even the distinction between someone who is Good versus someone who is Mediocre is critical. Another odd situation occurs if a ranged attacker goes up against a HTH attacker. In this situation both attackers go against very low targets values. The result is that both completely blow away eachother. There are some house rules to help out but out of the book this is how it plays.

It is blatantly obvious that the book was created by piecing together various Fudge articles from different authors. In makes the book very difficult to read and utilize in some respects. The tone changes…sometimes the implementation of various concepts is handled differently. The effect is jarring.

The artwork on the cover and interior is very poor. This is a book that a consumer would not pick up unless prompted by a friend or store clerk. The interior art is mostly stolen from publically available sources and it very inconsistent.

-== Summary ==-

Overall Fudge 10th Anniversary is an interesting product to get if you want something quick and dirty but are willing to make some changes to the system. The $35 price tag is a bit steep but not insane.

I give it 6 out of 10 paws.

-== What is it? ==-

Faery’s Tale Deluxe from Green Ronin Publishing is a role-playing game where players take on the role of pixies, brownies, sprites, and pooka. Everything that is needed to play is contained in the book.

The book has a color cover and an entirely black and white interior. The book is 6? x 9? and is 96 pages in length. I have not played the game I have only read the book.

-== What I Like ==-

I love the way that the book tackles the fae genre. The list of abilities is concise and uncluttered. You won’t see entries that people don’t want to play. Also each entry is explained with an example if there are multiple levels of effect.

The mechanics are very simply and I think they need to be for a game geared at younger players. On neat thing with the mechanics is the fact that they are additive only. You don’t have to worry about subtractions, multiplication, etc. Great touch. The only mechanic I’m hesitant on is the way the dice are totaled. The mechanic is to count the evens and odds. I guess that works but I almost wanted something simpler. I think custom dice with fairies and goblins or similar would be really great. There are dice on the Green Ronin site but they still have pips and rely on even and odd. I would have liked to see them go even farther.

The artwork is fantastic. It conveys a real sense of the fairy world and in playing a fae. Often pictures are angled from the view of the fairy and contain a great sense of wonder. The amount of artwork is just about right. There is not so much artwork that it impacts the text or layout in a poor manner. Very nice.

-== What I Don’t Like ==-

The adventures are a bit too open ended for introductory younger players in my mind. In some ways I was hoping that at least one of them was a bit more railroading. I know that sounds strange but when first starting with young kids I find that it helps?especially the first session where folks are learning the rules.

I also would have liked to see more sample character and possibly ones provided with the adventures. Maybe each having their own page with a picture and a summary of their abilities. It would be really nice to have details on each ability with the character sheet.

-== Summary ==-

I really like this product and I think it fills a great hole for younger gamers. My complaints are not serious and can be corrected with some minor work by the GM. The price point is fine at $20 for the print copy. I think $10 is a deal for the PDF. 🙂

I give it 8 out of 10 paws.