Various Free RPG reviews
Oct. 11th, 2013 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroDriveThruRPG is a great site, and there’s a lot of stuff that goes up on there for free, either as an incentive to buy more or because the publishers couldn’t sell it. I periodically download a bunch of free stuff when I’m checking up on the publishers who produce things worth my money (White Wolf/Onyx Path, mostly).
Khyber’s Harvest – D&D 4E adventure module for 2nd level characters
Fairly run-of-the-mill setup of the discovery of an evil cult hiding in a cavern and the dungeon-delve into said cavern…and deeper. It has a couple of interesting traps and some evocative descriptions, though, and a bunch of adventure hooks that could run off of it. And it comes with a pre-generated set of characters so you could play it right out of the box. In theory this is Ebberon-based; in function, it doesn’t really matter. Change a few names here and there, possible change some orcs into a different race, and this could work in most campaigns. If I had five players and a few hours for a classic dungeon dive, this is a perfectly fine choice.
Keep on the Shadowfell – D&D 4E adventure module for 1st level characters, plus Quickstart
This apparently holds the distinction of being the first published 4E adventure. It also features a run-of-the-mill setup and an evil cult. The battles are more of an “introductory” nature, easing the players and GM into the battle system of 4E. This is also a much larger module, involving several towns, the travel to the keep (and dealing with a lot of kobolds along the way), and then the multiple floors and many encounters of the keep itself. (4E modules remind me of the classic first edition modules, in a lot of ways. The setpiece encounters in each dungeon room is much of it.) But most of the encounters are just standard fights, with comparatively little in the way of NPC interaction, skill challenges, traps or hazards. About two dozen pages of this are devoted to quickstart rules for GMs and players, and a set of pre-generated (including details of two level-ups) characters. The last 50 pages are all full-color battlemaps of most of the locations. Overall, I think this is too repetitive for me to run as it is, but could be a decent source of low-level encounters to drop into other scenarios. (And if you’re picking up 4E for the first time, it’s not a bad place to start.)
Mazaki No Fantaji Quickstart
This claims to be an rpg system to simulate jrpgs; I’m not really seeing how, unless they’re specifically trying to simulate cutscenes. A read through the quickstarter makes it seem overly-complicated and unintuitive, but unconstrained at the same time. There are too many terms and too much jargon for what seems to be, “Make a lot of little moves to build up to a flashy attack; finagle as many of your traits as possible into every roll; the GM decides on your difficulty for everything.” I mean, if you’re excited about having a lot of arguments about how a thievery skill applies to healing wounds, (“I’m stealing the hit points back from the damage gods!”) then be my guest. But the point of an rpg system is to put guidelines in place so that every game isn’t just a game of Calvinball (preferably without everyone having to constantly stop and ask, “How do I do X again?”). This seems more like an extended game of “Kill Murray, Save Murray” with the players vs. the GM as the teams. Oh, and a health system that I’m certain I don’t understand at all.
A Nightmare at Hill Manor – New World of Darkness Story Module
Haunted house adventure for mortals in the World of Darkness, which I don’t want to go into too much detail on, because I think I may want to run it with the characters I’m in the process of driving crazy. But it’s a decently set up series of events that hand-holds the GM a bit, assuming you’re new to running WoD games. And it’s much more flexible and sets up more “Schrödinger’s guns” than most dungeon-based modules, allowing the GM to control the sequence of events better and never hanging the story on the success or failure of a single die roll. (It actually dedicates 25 pages to how to use the NWoD system and some general character creation rules, most of which are just reprinted from the core book. And it’s not a bad introduction of the horror setting they designed the core game to be.)
World of Darkness: The God Machine Rules Update
The Onyx Path split-off within White Wolf also marks what is effectively a “second edition” of the New World of Darkness. Their two big “new” projects (as much of their work has been the extension of existing game lines and the revival of OWoD as the 20th Anniversary lines) were the new game Mummy: The Curse, and the new setting/chronicle The God Machine. The latter lays out all of the changes to the core rules and systems in this new version (rather than releasing a new core WoD book), and those rules revisions are available as a free pdf.
Highlights: Character creation now includes short and long-term “aspirations” for the characters; and virtues and vices have a much more expansive list of choices. The Morality rating is replaced with Integrity, and a much more character-specific set of “breaking points” (rather than the standardized “hierarchy of sins”) of what can break down mental and moral stability. The XP system has been completely rewritten into “beats,” which you get for dramatic failures, fulfilling aspirations, resolving a condition, exceptional roleplaying or tactics, and completing game sessions (and the costs for advancement have changed accordingly). The Merits list has been revised and expanded, and now includes the Psychic Phenomena selection of supernatural merits. All Flaws and a number of previously system-free dramatic situations are now “Conditions”, which have specific mechanical effects and resolutions (and give you beats for overcoming)—and this includes Derangements from losing Integrity. Similarly, combat effects are now “Tilts”, and combat is much more dependent on the characters’ Intent and what they’re actually trying to achieve in the fight. A number of the other combat rules have been fiddled with, as well. The rules for Ghosts and Spirits have been combined, and revised to incorporate the new Conditions rules. Finally, there’s an updated equipment list and a selection of magical artifacts for mortal campaigns.
General impression: They continue to emphasize “getting experience for things you actually do to make the story more dramatic”, which has been the trend (in games in general) for some time. The D&D 4E trend of trying to streamline game elements into standardized conditions that can fit on index cards is evident, as well. It makes the system less freeform and open to easy improvisation, but also more fair and balanced for the players. I think they’re trying to reduce the need for GM fiat (which OWoD flatly recommended, as its systems could be broken as fuck), though the tradeoff of that is having a lot more to keep track of and often slowing down gameplay (as well as inviting lawyering). As usual, it’s the GM and the group’s play style that really matter.
I doubt I’ll “update” my current NWoD mini-campaign to these rules (especially since I’m using alternate rule sets for a bunch of parts already), but if I run the mini-campaign revolving around Mummy: The Curse that I’ve been contemplating, I’ll probably go whole-hog into the new rules set.
Totally unrelated gaming idea: If, at some point I have the opportunity to play in a 4E D&D game, I’d love to play a Shardmind Rogue, focused on stealth, bluffing and sneak attacks; who was a lithe humanoid made of glowing pink crystal who utterly rejected the notion of gender. They would be in a romantic relationship with a Warforged character (probably a fighter or other Defender-type) who also identified as genderless. They’d both probably spend a lot of time being exasperated by people assigning them as “female” and “male”, respectively, given their body types and party roles, which means I’d probably want to build as much gender-role-stereotype-fuckery into both characters as possible. (From a mechanics perspective, I’m digging the idea of playing a Bluff or Diplomacy-master who has universal-translator telepathy; and a sneak attacker/stealth character who can turn into a swarm of tiny flying crystals.)
Khyber’s Harvest – D&D 4E adventure module for 2nd level characters
Fairly run-of-the-mill setup of the discovery of an evil cult hiding in a cavern and the dungeon-delve into said cavern…and deeper. It has a couple of interesting traps and some evocative descriptions, though, and a bunch of adventure hooks that could run off of it. And it comes with a pre-generated set of characters so you could play it right out of the box. In theory this is Ebberon-based; in function, it doesn’t really matter. Change a few names here and there, possible change some orcs into a different race, and this could work in most campaigns. If I had five players and a few hours for a classic dungeon dive, this is a perfectly fine choice.
Keep on the Shadowfell – D&D 4E adventure module for 1st level characters, plus Quickstart
This apparently holds the distinction of being the first published 4E adventure. It also features a run-of-the-mill setup and an evil cult. The battles are more of an “introductory” nature, easing the players and GM into the battle system of 4E. This is also a much larger module, involving several towns, the travel to the keep (and dealing with a lot of kobolds along the way), and then the multiple floors and many encounters of the keep itself. (4E modules remind me of the classic first edition modules, in a lot of ways. The setpiece encounters in each dungeon room is much of it.) But most of the encounters are just standard fights, with comparatively little in the way of NPC interaction, skill challenges, traps or hazards. About two dozen pages of this are devoted to quickstart rules for GMs and players, and a set of pre-generated (including details of two level-ups) characters. The last 50 pages are all full-color battlemaps of most of the locations. Overall, I think this is too repetitive for me to run as it is, but could be a decent source of low-level encounters to drop into other scenarios. (And if you’re picking up 4E for the first time, it’s not a bad place to start.)
Mazaki No Fantaji Quickstart
This claims to be an rpg system to simulate jrpgs; I’m not really seeing how, unless they’re specifically trying to simulate cutscenes. A read through the quickstarter makes it seem overly-complicated and unintuitive, but unconstrained at the same time. There are too many terms and too much jargon for what seems to be, “Make a lot of little moves to build up to a flashy attack; finagle as many of your traits as possible into every roll; the GM decides on your difficulty for everything.” I mean, if you’re excited about having a lot of arguments about how a thievery skill applies to healing wounds, (“I’m stealing the hit points back from the damage gods!”) then be my guest. But the point of an rpg system is to put guidelines in place so that every game isn’t just a game of Calvinball (preferably without everyone having to constantly stop and ask, “How do I do X again?”). This seems more like an extended game of “Kill Murray, Save Murray” with the players vs. the GM as the teams. Oh, and a health system that I’m certain I don’t understand at all.
A Nightmare at Hill Manor – New World of Darkness Story Module
Haunted house adventure for mortals in the World of Darkness, which I don’t want to go into too much detail on, because I think I may want to run it with the characters I’m in the process of driving crazy. But it’s a decently set up series of events that hand-holds the GM a bit, assuming you’re new to running WoD games. And it’s much more flexible and sets up more “Schrödinger’s guns” than most dungeon-based modules, allowing the GM to control the sequence of events better and never hanging the story on the success or failure of a single die roll. (It actually dedicates 25 pages to how to use the NWoD system and some general character creation rules, most of which are just reprinted from the core book. And it’s not a bad introduction of the horror setting they designed the core game to be.)
World of Darkness: The God Machine Rules Update
The Onyx Path split-off within White Wolf also marks what is effectively a “second edition” of the New World of Darkness. Their two big “new” projects (as much of their work has been the extension of existing game lines and the revival of OWoD as the 20th Anniversary lines) were the new game Mummy: The Curse, and the new setting/chronicle The God Machine. The latter lays out all of the changes to the core rules and systems in this new version (rather than releasing a new core WoD book), and those rules revisions are available as a free pdf.
Highlights: Character creation now includes short and long-term “aspirations” for the characters; and virtues and vices have a much more expansive list of choices. The Morality rating is replaced with Integrity, and a much more character-specific set of “breaking points” (rather than the standardized “hierarchy of sins”) of what can break down mental and moral stability. The XP system has been completely rewritten into “beats,” which you get for dramatic failures, fulfilling aspirations, resolving a condition, exceptional roleplaying or tactics, and completing game sessions (and the costs for advancement have changed accordingly). The Merits list has been revised and expanded, and now includes the Psychic Phenomena selection of supernatural merits. All Flaws and a number of previously system-free dramatic situations are now “Conditions”, which have specific mechanical effects and resolutions (and give you beats for overcoming)—and this includes Derangements from losing Integrity. Similarly, combat effects are now “Tilts”, and combat is much more dependent on the characters’ Intent and what they’re actually trying to achieve in the fight. A number of the other combat rules have been fiddled with, as well. The rules for Ghosts and Spirits have been combined, and revised to incorporate the new Conditions rules. Finally, there’s an updated equipment list and a selection of magical artifacts for mortal campaigns.
General impression: They continue to emphasize “getting experience for things you actually do to make the story more dramatic”, which has been the trend (in games in general) for some time. The D&D 4E trend of trying to streamline game elements into standardized conditions that can fit on index cards is evident, as well. It makes the system less freeform and open to easy improvisation, but also more fair and balanced for the players. I think they’re trying to reduce the need for GM fiat (which OWoD flatly recommended, as its systems could be broken as fuck), though the tradeoff of that is having a lot more to keep track of and often slowing down gameplay (as well as inviting lawyering). As usual, it’s the GM and the group’s play style that really matter.
I doubt I’ll “update” my current NWoD mini-campaign to these rules (especially since I’m using alternate rule sets for a bunch of parts already), but if I run the mini-campaign revolving around Mummy: The Curse that I’ve been contemplating, I’ll probably go whole-hog into the new rules set.
Totally unrelated gaming idea: If, at some point I have the opportunity to play in a 4E D&D game, I’d love to play a Shardmind Rogue, focused on stealth, bluffing and sneak attacks; who was a lithe humanoid made of glowing pink crystal who utterly rejected the notion of gender. They would be in a romantic relationship with a Warforged character (probably a fighter or other Defender-type) who also identified as genderless. They’d both probably spend a lot of time being exasperated by people assigning them as “female” and “male”, respectively, given their body types and party roles, which means I’d probably want to build as much gender-role-stereotype-fuckery into both characters as possible. (From a mechanics perspective, I’m digging the idea of playing a Bluff or Diplomacy-master who has universal-translator telepathy; and a sneak attacker/stealth character who can turn into a swarm of tiny flying crystals.)
