Invaderz Adventure Seed: Mooning

The filthy humans – so primitive that they still set off explosives under themselves to get into space – have been talking about returning to their inferior, singular moon for some time. Until now the Jerkian Empire has been sure that they would never bother given the sickening uselessness of their technology and their peculiarly insular political system, dictatorship by the Emperor is FAR more effective.

Now, however, something has changed, perhaps due to repeated Jerkian inference on Earth. The problem is that one of the imperial fleets is stationed on and behind the moon and while it would be easy to simply destroy the Earthian expedition, that would tip the Jerkian hand and make things more difficult than they would need to be.

Fleet Commander of intelligence, Xoz, has detailed the team to deal with the problem, not by destroying the humans but by ensuring that the mission – once it lands – is plagued with problems and distracted from noticing the flying saucer, rubbish heaps, graffiti, footprints and other evidence of alien presence.

Accomplishing this WITHOUT destroying the humans is the challenge…

Review: 6d6 – Mince Pies & Murder

Introduction
This is a very specific story/adventure using the ‘ultra light’ version of the new 6d6 rules system. It acts as a sort of demo of the basics of the system and shoes off its framework and its adaptability, easing you into the system. A good way to pique your interest in it for the future.

Background
Sleuths are a thorn in the side of both the criminal and the police establishments. They go after the former and show up the later, not taking bribes when they’re supposed to and making everyone else look like an idiot – on both sides of the law. A handful of the top sleuths in the world have been called into a trap at a manor (where else?) by a gangster determined to have his revenge. To survive they’ll have to sleuth what’s going on and defeat their personal nemesi who are masquerading as staff, waiting for the moment to strike…

Mechanics
There’s no character sheet, rather you have a deck of cards to represent your character – a small deck. Each card represents a capability, a skill, a physical attribute and so on (somewhat similar to FATE’s aspects, but a bit less flowery) and these are then ‘bid’ to build a rolling pool to use against the task difficulty or the opposition. This is similar to bidding traits in the old Mind’s Eye Theatre LARP or calling on descriptives in Neverwhere.

The game also allows for you to have blank cards which you can fill in as the game goes along, allowing you to spring surprise abilities and skills upon your enemies as and when you need them, something which is damned useful, particularly in one-off games such as Mince Pies and Murder as they can change things up and keep the game chuntering along when it might otherwise reach a dead end.

Skill combos do have to make sense of course, you can’t seduce and intimidate someone at the same time.

Atmosphere
Mince Pies and Murder has some good suggestions on how to run the game and is quite tightly structured, giving it a strong narrative and atmospheric tone but limiting the space in which the players have to interpret their characters or step outside of the suggested run of the story. In some ways it’s more like a farce or a satirical play than a game per se, albeit one with a lot of improvisation. It works well as a convention game or as an introduction to 6d6 though and the gentile murder mystery hook is one that everyone should be able to pick up and run with. The manor house and the villains are nicely detailed and if you’ve had time to read up on the adventure and the various antagonists beforehand there’s more depth than there first appears to be.

Artwork
Other than the cover there is none. The design is spartan but given the nature of the book that doesn’t really detract.

Conclusion
This is begging for a LARP conversion, though I’m not entirely sure how you would do that. At Indiecon the game had little cards on keyring holders and that struck me as a useful, portable way to move your character ‘sheet’ around without easily losing it. Mince Pies and Murder is an excellent introduction to the system and hints at greater complexity and depth that is to come with the fuller version of the game, one I’ll be curious to see.

On the Plus side

• Great introduction.
• Good satire/poke at the sleuth genre.
• Experimental and interesting.

On the Minus Side

• No art save the cover.
• Acknowledged formatting issues – no biggie.
• Assumes a certain amount of familiarity with the genre.

Score
Style 4
Substance 3 (It IS only an intro game, so you shouldn’t expect too much.
overall 3.5 (More like a 4)

Another Invaderz Review!

This time from HERE

On complete impulse, I picked up the Pocket Edition of Invaderz by Postmortem Studios What the heck it was only about $2. And it was well worth it.
You are a vat-grown Clone Trooper of the Jerkian Empire and you have been sent to Earthian Front to carry out the Enormous Emperor’s whims. Invaderz is a humorous hodgepodge of Invader Zim, Destroy All Humans, Mars Attacks and Paranoia.
Character generation is dirt simple. Generate your name. Roll to see which profession your character has. You might even be one of the Jerkian slave races. Pity the poor guy that ends up with a Hamstoid Minesweeper. Red Shirts have a longer life expectancy than you do. Tweak character. Roll for random piece of equipment. Roll for random piece of experimental equipment. Get issued your Automated, Robotic Servile Entity or A.R.S.E. Unit. Strap on your Furry Utility Rucksack or F.U.R. Then let the fun and carnage begin. The mechanics are also really simple. Just a modified d6 roll. I mean after all this a beer and pretzels/crisps game. That’s all there is to it. The fun part is Merits and Demerits. The characters are all vying for rank and the favor of the Enlarged Emperor. Now the brown nosing and backstabbing begin.
Invaderz is perfect for a fun little pick up game, con game or a “well what the hell are we going to do tonight” type of game. Even if you don’t ever play the game, just reading it is good for a laugh.

Buy it now! The Pants Command you! Available from Drivethrurpg.

Invaderz Review from 6D6 Fireball

6D6 Site here HERE

The pricing of PDFs is a big issue right now, with our own experiment with Pay-What-You-Want and Adamant’s App Price across the board approach. Now fellow small publisher Postmortem Studios is testing ‘app-pricing’ on a new InvaderZ: Pocket Edition.

This is an updated edition of their 2008 InvaderZ product that has been reformatted to A5 and reduced in price to $1.99 (approximately £1.50). As we are both trying to experiment with PDF pricing, Postmortem and I exchanged review copies so look for a review of Mince Pies & Murder on their web site soon.

InvaderZ – What Is It?

InvaderZ is a self-described “beer and crisps” game (or beer and pretzels if you’re American). It is not a serious game nor a game for long, epic campaigns, It is a game to roll out when you fancy something fun or you are drunk and need a game that matches your current intellectual capacity.

Players take the role of the invaders from the alien planet Jerkia who are exploring our planet, mutilating our cows and probing in all the wrong places purely for the amusement of their Emperor. Each Jerkian is grown in a test tube, educated (in the loosest possible sense) by a computer and sent to fulfill missions that are either stupid, suicidal or both. The Jerkian invaders come complete with ray guns, flying sources and a variety of other cliches.

A key aspect of the game is that the Jerkian empire is completely rubbish and run as a plaything for the Emperor. Its technology generally doesn’t work and its people are seen as being entirely disposable. Imagine North Korea in space and you won’t be far wrong.

If I had to sum-up the game in a single, elevator pitch it would be “Paranoia crossed with Mars Attacks! with a splash of X-Com.”

The PDF

At over 100 A5 pages, you end up with a good solid little book when printed out. It covers everything you need to run the game including background, an extremely simple character generation system, equipment and adventure ideas. The light-hearted writing style fits the game perfectly and the limited mechanics are explained well.

Bugbears

It is important to note that the three things I don’t like about the PDF are personal bugbears of mine. Other people probably won’t care or even notice them.

Each page of the PDF has a large header and footer graphic repeated on every page. These take up 6.5 centimeters of the 20cm page, or about 1/4th. The graphics are solid, dark colours and over the documents 100+ pages they add considerably to the cost of printing the PDF. To a cheapskate environmentally minded person like myself, this maters.

Each page also has a background image underneath the text. This is an extremely light-grey image and generally doesn’t detract from the text. However I have poor eye-sight and anything other than straight black-on-white text aggravates my eyes. The font-size used in the PDF was a little on the small size though perfectly readable but the addition of the background made reading the PDF hard work for my already tired eyes.

Finally there is no table of contents or index. Even in a game as silly and light-hearted as InvaderZ, players occasionally need to look things up.

Worth The Money?

At $1.99? Absolutely.

A fun 100 page read plus the amusement of playing the game for the same price as a Starbuck’s coffee or a pint of beer is a real no brainer.

This is perfect for keeping on your laptop or e-reader, ready to pull out whenever your planned session falls through or you’re in a convention bar. No real preparation is necessary by the GM and the players certainly don’t need to know the rules.

Final word – Buy it now before you end up with a Jerkian probe where the sun don’t shine.