Today is the last day to enter a comment to enter to win my copy of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Domain of Dread: Histaven, their FreeRPGDay booklet.
Leave a comment here before midnight Central Standard Time!
New-School Rules, Old-School Style
Showing posts with label Contest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contest. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Free RPG Day Review and Giveaway: Arcanis, the World of Shattered Empires Fast Play Book
Out of all the booklets I got for FreeRPGDay, Arcanis: the World of Shattered Empires intrigued me the most, probably due to the Ancient Roman style guy and vampire mage on the cover. I wasn't familiar with the setting, as I never really got into the 3rd Edition of D&D, but it was apparently an award-winning setting of the D20/OGL era, and now its publisher is giving it its own system.
The booklet clocks in at 30 pages and includes basic rules suitable for a night of play, four characters, a short adventure, and a blank 2-sided character sheet. The art inside is excellent and I imagine it will probably all appear in the full rulebook when it is released at Origins.
The resolution system seems to me to be an amalgam of mechanics cobbled together from different sources. Arcanis' roots are in the d20 system. The core mechanic of this system is to roll 2d10 (your Action Dice), roll the die associated with whatever attribute is appropriate (from among the following: Might, Prowess, Quickness, Vitality, Charisma, Insight, Logic, and Resolve), add any relevant modifiers and try to beat a target number. All the attributes have both a score (all the pregenerated heroes have scores from 3-7) and a die size (d4, d6, etc).
There is an exploding die mechanic.There are "Fate" points which can be used in a number of ways to bend the rules. Characters have three different defense scores: Avoidance, Discipline, and Fortitude (which might as well have been d20's Reflex, Willpower, and Fortitude, but I digress). Armor has a Rating that soaks up damage.
Characters also have access to weapon tricks and spells, which seem pretty similar to 4E's powers.
There are two different types of damage a character can sustain: Stamina and Wounds. Typically, a character has a high stamina score, and when it is depleted from damage, you fall unconscious. A character can handle only a few Wounds before possibly dying.
It seems to be expected that combat be handled using a 1-inch square mat or Dungeon Tiles and miniatures. It features an interesting Initiative Clock feature for combat. Basically, instead of having set turns and rounds and such, each action you take happens after so many ticks of the "Clock".
Overall, it is definitely interesting, but too many fiddly bits for my liking. And I like 4E D&D!
The included adventure is a fairly straightforward affair designed to introduce the basics of the combat system with a bit of roleplaying thrown in for good measure.
I'm also a bit of a grammar nazi. Poor grammar, syntax, and misspellings stick out like sore thumbs to me. There aren't a whole lot of those types of errors in the booklet, but there were enough to make me take notice. It seems as if it may have needed another edit.
I know this hasn't been the most glowing review I've done, but it's my two cents. If you were a fan of the Arcanis setting in the good ole days of the D20/OGL, and are interested in getting the upcoming game, it's definitely worth a read-through! I will select one winner at random from among all the comments left below.
The booklet clocks in at 30 pages and includes basic rules suitable for a night of play, four characters, a short adventure, and a blank 2-sided character sheet. The art inside is excellent and I imagine it will probably all appear in the full rulebook when it is released at Origins.
The resolution system seems to me to be an amalgam of mechanics cobbled together from different sources. Arcanis' roots are in the d20 system. The core mechanic of this system is to roll 2d10 (your Action Dice), roll the die associated with whatever attribute is appropriate (from among the following: Might, Prowess, Quickness, Vitality, Charisma, Insight, Logic, and Resolve), add any relevant modifiers and try to beat a target number. All the attributes have both a score (all the pregenerated heroes have scores from 3-7) and a die size (d4, d6, etc).
There is an exploding die mechanic.There are "Fate" points which can be used in a number of ways to bend the rules. Characters have three different defense scores: Avoidance, Discipline, and Fortitude (which might as well have been d20's Reflex, Willpower, and Fortitude, but I digress). Armor has a Rating that soaks up damage.
Characters also have access to weapon tricks and spells, which seem pretty similar to 4E's powers.
There are two different types of damage a character can sustain: Stamina and Wounds. Typically, a character has a high stamina score, and when it is depleted from damage, you fall unconscious. A character can handle only a few Wounds before possibly dying.
It seems to be expected that combat be handled using a 1-inch square mat or Dungeon Tiles and miniatures. It features an interesting Initiative Clock feature for combat. Basically, instead of having set turns and rounds and such, each action you take happens after so many ticks of the "Clock".
Overall, it is definitely interesting, but too many fiddly bits for my liking. And I like 4E D&D!
The included adventure is a fairly straightforward affair designed to introduce the basics of the combat system with a bit of roleplaying thrown in for good measure.
I'm also a bit of a grammar nazi. Poor grammar, syntax, and misspellings stick out like sore thumbs to me. There aren't a whole lot of those types of errors in the booklet, but there were enough to make me take notice. It seems as if it may have needed another edit.
I know this hasn't been the most glowing review I've done, but it's my two cents. If you were a fan of the Arcanis setting in the good ole days of the D20/OGL, and are interested in getting the upcoming game, it's definitely worth a read-through! I will select one winner at random from among all the comments left below.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Free RPG Day Review and Giveaway: Dungeon Crawl Classics Adventure Starter
This is the second of a series of reviews and giveaways of my FreeRPGDay haul! So leave a comment below if you want a shot at getting this copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics Adventure Starter. Note that if you live outside the United States, I must request that you pay for shipping. More details here!
I must admit first that I have not yet had the time to dig into my download of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Beta Test Rules, even though they are pretty much necessary to use this booklet. It says so right there on page 1. Of course, that's just if you lack imagination and resources. Ninety-nine percent of the content of this book is system-neutral (or at the very least, system-vague), that it would be entirely too easy for even a fair to middling Dungeon Master to convert it to whatever system might be running at your table. Seriously. The stuff in here is gold, but just rip it off for your own system at home. Don't bother with the zocchi dice. That's just a bullshit marketing ploy to try to get you to buy a bunch of goofy dice you'll only ever use a few times. Is Goodman Games getting into the dice business? Actually, yes. Yes they are. Imagine that.
That being said, this is still a pretty excellent sixteen pages, which is why I am hesitant to let it go as part of this contest. That, and the art. The art is great. There are three full-page illustrations (out of sixteen pages!), plus two full-page dungeon maps that are works of art in their own right, and art on several of the other pages. However, I'm thinking I will make a copy for my DM binder and then send it off to our lucky winner, purely on account of the fact that Goodman Games gave away dead-tree copies of this booklet on FreeRPGDay, and is now selling PDFs of it for $5.
Wha?
Now, I don't know anything about the guys behind Goodman Games. I haven't read their Beta Test rules for DCC. All I know it, a couple weeks ago the OSR Blogosphere blew up, out of nowhere, over this Dungeon Crawl Classics thing. I kind of have a feeling that it will fade away as quickly as it blew up. I certainly don't speak for anyone in the OSR but myself, but I can see this being a "niche of a niche" game, kind of like Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
The two dungeons are solid and interesting, although they feel pretty similar to a lot of what I've seen published in the One-Page-Dungeon format. They are short, but offer plenty of opportunity for interaction with the environment and creative problem-solving, as well as plenty of killing-stuff-and-taking-their-stuff. I'm looking forward to adapting these two dungeons to work in 4E, but that's a whole different post.
Want it? Leave me a comment!
I must admit first that I have not yet had the time to dig into my download of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Beta Test Rules, even though they are pretty much necessary to use this booklet. It says so right there on page 1. Of course, that's just if you lack imagination and resources. Ninety-nine percent of the content of this book is system-neutral (or at the very least, system-vague), that it would be entirely too easy for even a fair to middling Dungeon Master to convert it to whatever system might be running at your table. Seriously. The stuff in here is gold, but just rip it off for your own system at home. Don't bother with the zocchi dice. That's just a bullshit marketing ploy to try to get you to buy a bunch of goofy dice you'll only ever use a few times. Is Goodman Games getting into the dice business? Actually, yes. Yes they are. Imagine that.
That being said, this is still a pretty excellent sixteen pages, which is why I am hesitant to let it go as part of this contest. That, and the art. The art is great. There are three full-page illustrations (out of sixteen pages!), plus two full-page dungeon maps that are works of art in their own right, and art on several of the other pages. However, I'm thinking I will make a copy for my DM binder and then send it off to our lucky winner, purely on account of the fact that Goodman Games gave away dead-tree copies of this booklet on FreeRPGDay, and is now selling PDFs of it for $5.
Wha?
Now, I don't know anything about the guys behind Goodman Games. I haven't read their Beta Test rules for DCC. All I know it, a couple weeks ago the OSR Blogosphere blew up, out of nowhere, over this Dungeon Crawl Classics thing. I kind of have a feeling that it will fade away as quickly as it blew up. I certainly don't speak for anyone in the OSR but myself, but I can see this being a "niche of a niche" game, kind of like Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
The two dungeons are solid and interesting, although they feel pretty similar to a lot of what I've seen published in the One-Page-Dungeon format. They are short, but offer plenty of opportunity for interaction with the environment and creative problem-solving, as well as plenty of killing-stuff-and-taking-their-stuff. I'm looking forward to adapting these two dungeons to work in 4E, but that's a whole different post.
Want it? Leave me a comment!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Happy Free RPG Day to Me!
So, I already posted once about my FreeRPGDay excursion to the Fantasy Shop in Florissant, where I picked up the D&D 4E offering and the Dragon Age quickstart booklet, along with dropping a good chunk of change on the sale they had going.
Well, my father-in-law is a gaming and comic geek going way back and is in pretty tight with the owners of his FLGS, and Sunday morning he handed me a big stack of FreeRPGDay material that mostly wasn't even at my FLGS, or that I passed over to observe the 3-item limit (although I only took 2!).
So here's the addition to what I pulled in for FreeRPGDay:
Savage Worlds: The Wild Hunt by John Goff
World of Darkness: A Nightmare At Hill Manor
Dungeon Crawl Classics: Adventure Starter
Pathfinder: We Be Goblins by Richard Pett
Arcanis, the World of Shattered Empires Fast Play
XD20: Laser Squid Nemesis by Stephen Furlani
Now, clearly I have a surfeit of goods here, and far more than I will probably ever use. In the interest of blog material, I am planning on doing full reads and possible playtests for each FreeRPGDay item, and doing a proper review here.
Now, I know that there are a lot of folks out there who didn't have a FLGS that was participating in FreeRPGDay. I also know that I certainly won't use the majority of this booklets at all. So, after I do each review, I'll be randomly selecting an American commenter to receive my copy (apologies to anyone living outside the United States, but I just can't afford international shipping. I do have paypal, though, so if you live outside the U.S. and want to pay for the shipping, by all means, you can enter!). More details soon!
Well, my father-in-law is a gaming and comic geek going way back and is in pretty tight with the owners of his FLGS, and Sunday morning he handed me a big stack of FreeRPGDay material that mostly wasn't even at my FLGS, or that I passed over to observe the 3-item limit (although I only took 2!).
So here's the addition to what I pulled in for FreeRPGDay:
Savage Worlds: The Wild Hunt by John Goff
World of Darkness: A Nightmare At Hill Manor
Dungeon Crawl Classics: Adventure Starter
Pathfinder: We Be Goblins by Richard Pett
Arcanis, the World of Shattered Empires Fast Play
XD20: Laser Squid Nemesis by Stephen Furlani
Now, clearly I have a surfeit of goods here, and far more than I will probably ever use. In the interest of blog material, I am planning on doing full reads and possible playtests for each FreeRPGDay item, and doing a proper review here.
Now, I know that there are a lot of folks out there who didn't have a FLGS that was participating in FreeRPGDay. I also know that I certainly won't use the majority of this booklets at all. So, after I do each review, I'll be randomly selecting an American commenter to receive my copy (apologies to anyone living outside the United States, but I just can't afford international shipping. I do have paypal, though, so if you live outside the U.S. and want to pay for the shipping, by all means, you can enter!). More details soon!
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