#RPG – Dishonoured RPG Review

As a supplement to my video review of the game, here’s a character and some sample play/mechanics.

Jaime Vavala, The Gutter-Blade

Truth: Loyal to my friends.
Truth: Driven by revenge.
Skills: Fight: 6, Move: 6, Study: 4, Survive: 4, Talk: 5, Tinker: 4
Styles: Boldly: 4, Carefully: 4, Cleverly: 4, Forcefully: 4, Quietly: 5, Swiftly: 5
Focus: Fencing: 5, Stealth: 4, Locks: 3, Streetwise: 3
Contacts: Urza the Fence
Talents: Flashing Steel: Second Attack at +1 difficulty if attacking ‘Swiftly’.
Gear: Fine Blade: Damage 4, Block (reroll 1d20 in defence), Melee

The rattly old cart comes to a halt just inside the city gates of Samara and the steel cage is thrown open. Huddled men, little more than skeletons, shuffle off the cart, wrapped in thin blankets. Only one man moves with any bearing or strength, a rail-thin man, looking as though he is made of coiled rope, his face thin and sallow, his eyes hollow and sunken, but full of fire.

Jaime, the gutter-blade, back from his time in the prison camps of Tyvia. One of a handful to survive long enough to be freed, in the proper sense.

Jaime draws the thin blanket around himself tighter and moves through the slushy streets, his feet numb from the ice. Two men peel away from the eel-stand to follow him.

[Contest Roll]
[Gang Member Move 6, Quietly 4]
[17/15 = 0 successes. 5/8 = 2 successes]

[Jaime Study 4, Cleverly 4]
[8/12 = 1 success]

Jaime takes not of the distorted reflection in a bottleglass window, there’s someone following him. As he trudges through the slush he waits for a carriage to pass, and ducks into a side alley to try and shake off the pursuit.

[Contest Roll]
[Jaime – Move 6, Swiftly 5, Stealth 4]
[10/18 = 1 success]

[Gang Member Study 4, Cleverly 4]
[10/19 = 0 successes. 1/9 = 2 successes]

It seems like the two men have been lost as Jaime darts along the alley as fast as he can, picking his way through streets that were once familiar until he finds the sign he’s looking for. Three golden balls dangling outside a basement shop. He shuffles down the steps, opens the door with a little chime and turns the sign to closed.

There is a large, burly man behind the counter with forearm hair as long as your thumb.

“Urza,” croaks out Jaime. “I’ve come for my things.”

Urza turns, surprised. “Jaime? I thought you were dead!”

“I asked you to look after my things. I want them. Now.”

Urza begins to shuffle through the shelves. “It has been a long time Jaime my friend, and I thought you were dead.”

“I paid you enough back then. I want my clothes, my coin and my sword.”

Urza shrugs apologetically and continues to rummage.

The door chimes again, despite the closed sign, and a pair of men enter, scarred and rough looking, the men who followed him.

“Hello Urza,” says one of the men. “Cadenza sends greetings. You’re not going to help this criminal are you?”

“Ah Yev, Miron, of course not, heh…” Urza raises his hands, leaving a battered old scabbard on the top of the table, the worn handle of the sword dully reflecting the lamp light.

“Now then,” says the taller of the two men. “Why don’t you come outside with us, Gutter-blade? Let’s have a nice little chat about what you got up to in prison.”

“If Urza won’t help me, I guess I’ll help myself.”

[It’s important to see if Jaime manages to attack first, he has his back to the gang members so they have the drop on him, increasing the difficulty by +1]
[Gang Members Study 4, Swiftly 5]
[10/18 = 0+1=1 Success, 2/18 = 1+1=2 successes]

[Jaime Fight 6, Swiftly 5, Fencing 5]
[6/9 = 2 successes, enough]

[Now the actual attack]
[15/20 = 0, + Complication]
[Second Attack +1 Difficulty]
[8/11 = 2 successes]

[Gang Member Defence Fight 5, Forcefully 5]
[20/19 = 0 successes + Complication]
[16/11 = 0 successes]

Jaime lashes out with his blade, moving like lightning. The first gang member throws himself back from the sharp edge, just barely getting out of the way, falling back through Urza’s window in a shower of glass and wood.

The second guard is slashed across the throat and falls, gurgling to the floor, dying on the dusty floor.

[+2 Chaos, +2 Momentum]

There’s a third man, waiting outside on watch, and now he draws his own knife and joins the fight, as the first man hauls himself up from the floor and throws himself at Jaime in a bearhug.

[Grapple]
[Fight 5, Forcefully 5, Brawl 4]
[1/20 = 2 Successes, Complication]

[Knife Attack]
[Fight 5, Swiftly 5]
[7/5 = 2 successes]

[Defence]
[Fight 6, Swiftly 5, Fencing 5]
[3/6 = 3 successes]
[1/10 = 3 successes]

[Spend two momentum to make a counter attack]

Jaime turns with the man who leaps into him, slashing him from his neck to his navel and opening him up like the world’s least appealing string of sausages, twisting just in time to block the knife in a shower of sparks.

[+2 Chaos, -2 Momentum, +2 Momentum]

Jaime twists, using the opening from the parried knife to do a quick double-slash, back and forth across the man’s belly and thighs.

[Spend momentum for one extra die]
[Fight 6, Swiftly 5, Fencing 5]
[3/8/10 = 4 successes]

[Guard Defence]
[Fight 5, Swiftly 5]
[10/18 = 1 success]

The guard groans from the slashes, blood and entrails spilling rapidly from his opened guts and opened arteries.

[+2 Chaos, +3 Momentum]

Jaime jerks the sword, spraying the blood from it and turns back to Urza.

“You spent my money, didn’t you?”

“I did. How about I clean up this mess and move somewhere warmer and we call it even.”

“Not even, but better.”

Jaime slides his sword into its scabbard and starts stripping the gang members for their boots, clothing and purses. Three members of his gang, that was a good start, but only a start.

#RPG – A Review for ‘World of Gor’

From John. A. over on RPGNOW.

The Gor section at RPGNOW can be found HERE.

The World of Gor: Gorean Roleplaying World Encyclopedia is a fantastic addition to the Tales of Gor rpg. First the technical points. The pdf’s organization was well done. It contains an introduction section on Gor, followed by the author’s experience with Gor, a summation of all 34 Gorean series books, and then a chapter by chapter, A to Z encyclopedia. I’m a sucker for a well laid out book.

The content itself is phenomenal. The book is worth it even if you don’t play the rpg but just enjoy the book series. I know from now on, that when I read Norman’s books, I’ll have this handy so I can look things up quickly and easily. As a gaming tool, it’ll make explaining aspects of Gor to the group a breeze. For example, castes can be a rather daunting task to explain. With the encyclopedia, I have an entry for each caste, that describes their profession, dress, and general lot in life. Great detail has been given to each entry within.

The encyclopedia doesn’t just tackle the “low hanging fruit” either by just giving certain topics like slavery one entry. But instead, we get the whole picture. I now can confidently understand and explain the intricate and complicated concepts of Gorean slavery to my group. Or Kaissa, a game like chess on Gor, could have had a simple entry but instead we essentially get the game explained to us. With entries such as this, my Gor rpg can come alive for my players because it gives me the tools to do so.

Normally, I’d have to go to various websites to prepare background information or go from book to book of Norman’s work to prepare for a game like Gor. Now, it is all at my fingertips. If you are a fan of Gor, I recommend this book, just like I did the actual rpg. They are wonderful reading enhancements to the world. And if you are a Gor rpg player, then to me, this is a must! Also, the price is very, very fair for the amount of time and work that must have went into creating this encyclopedia!

#RPG – Gor Guide & World Book Review

‘Emma of Gor’ has written a useful guide for those wanting to take a very purist approach to making and playing their characters. You can find that link here:

Gorean Character Creation

More so than most games, ‘Tales of Gor’ cries out for players to create characters that seem a natural fit to the thriving and detailed world they live in. This is not really the campaign setting for you to foist a generic D&D adventurer on. To get the most out of the Gor setting you’d do well to consider the kind of people that live on the Counter Earth. While you don’t have to play ‘typical Goreans’ – the game after all makes the point many times that Gor is yours to interpret as you will – what follows is a guide to character creation if you want to truly capture the flavour of the kind of people who live, fight and lust throughout the Gorean cycle.

World of Gor, meanwhile, has been reviewed, link below.

In strict alphabetical order, the entries cover everything from prominent individuals to flora and fauna, popular beliefs and customs, and matters of everyday life. They are illustrated by relevant quotations from the books as well as splendid pen-and-ink drawings that capture the exotic feel of the world well. Even where slaves are involved, they remain tastefully done… and are particularly fascinating when they depict the exotic animals of Gor.

World of Gor review.

#RPG – Review – Magnum Fury

There’s really only one undisputed king of action movie genre emulation when it comes to tabletop games, and that’s first edition Feng Shui. Everything else is a pale imitation, no matter when those imitations came out chronologically – even before Feng Shui did. Trying to create a genre emulation RPG in this arena is, then, a pretty goddamn ballsy move.

Magnum Fury by Leonard A. Pimentel for LakeSide Games attempts to recreate the feel of more western action movies of the 80s and 90s, where Feng Shui is more about the over-the-top action of wire-work Kung Fu epics from Golden Harvest and their ilk. Here it’s more about Die Hard than Zu Warriors and that means there is some different emphasis.

MF definitely takes some cues from Feng Shui, especially in the way it handles ‘Mooks’ and things, but it’s a bit more open in terms of character creation and drops the most defining feature of Feng Shui – stunts. This is a little disappointing, but also thematically better fits what happens in 80s style films.

The system is simple and quick, using 2d6 (3 if you have advantage) and adding bonuses to see if you fail, succeed with a cost, or succeed outright. The idea of ‘No’, ‘Yes, but’ and ‘Yes’ is something I’ve played around with in games – but more expanded – and it does definitely help drive the narrative aspect of these sorts of games mechanically. You can think of Die Hard as a game in which John’s player keeps rolling ‘Yes, but…’ results.

Characters are primarily defined by their style (such as ‘Cerebral’ or ‘Dangerous’, their career,  such as ‘Private Detective’ or ‘Assassin’ and their drive and flaw. Everything else – abilities and so on – are essentially set dressing.

There’s nothing massively innovative here, but its an interesting ‘Frankenstein’ of game concepts, brought together in an effective and fun package, presented in a format that suits a laptop screen rather than print. It knows its a one-off, con-slot or fill in type game and plays to that strength.

Personally, I’d use it to run players through the plots of some god-awful ‘straight to video’ actions flicks of the 80s, such as frequently appear on Red Letter Media’s ‘Best of the Worst’. These films, weirdly, often make fantastic inspiration for RPGs.

At 24 pages this is pretty slim, but it doesn’t need to be huge. At $3.00 that’s about right (perhaps 50 cents over what I’d charge) but it’s definitely worth a shot.

Style: 4/5
Substance: 3/5
Overall: 3.5/5

A great little filler game. For three bucks you can hardly go wrong.

You can buy it HERE.

#RPG – A Lengthy, Good, Review of the Gor RPG

This rather lovely review of Tales of Gor dropped on RPGNOW, written by Emma R. You can buy the books at RPGNOW (in PDF, you may have to log in and change settings to make adult content visible) or at Lulu.com in hardcopy.

***

It’s fair to say that Gor has something of a polarising opinion on people.

And that’s putting it mildly.

While ostensibly derived from the same pulp ‘swords and planet’ genre that spawned adventure romps by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, Leigh Brackett and Michael Moorcock amongst many others, Gor from an early age ensured its commercial popularity and courted controversy at the same time by making slavery an integral part of the setting, to the point where nowadays that is pretty much all it is (in)famous for.

That said, it was once a common series of books in the 1970s and early 1980s in the Science Fiction sections of bookshops, occupying vast tracts of shelf space, and the basic core idea (setting aside the more controversial elements) of a primitive Counter Earth orbiting the Sun on the opposite side to the Earth, and the secret war between two alien races vying to control both Gor and (as a secondary prize) Earth is a good one and cries out for a role-playing game to match. And now at last it has one.

The core set comes as two volumes – game stats and character design (plus an introduction to the culture setting) in the first, and an encyclopaedic compendium of A to Z reference material in the second. This makes commercial sense as there are thousands of potential Gor fans who might wish to pick up the reference material, even though they don’t play RPGs, and wouldn’t need to know how many hit points a Sleen has.

43 on average, just in case you’re wondering. 🙂

The first thing to remark upon as I crack open (in a virtual pdf kind of way) the electronic spine of the Tales of Gor game manual is how uncontroversial it actually is once you skim its pages. Yes, there are some pictures of naked breasts, but the author has not produced a game book that beats you about the head with lectures about slavery and the natural order of the genders. What you have is what you would actually want – a sleek, easy to grasp set of rules to establish characters and campaign adventures set on the ‘sword and sandal’ world of Gor.

It takes the adventure setting of Gor first and foremost, and while it doesn’t shy away from the prevalent nature of slavery on that world, I wouldn’t say the slavery aspect in the game books is any more prevalent than in the old Mongoose Conan RPG or in the Rome TV series. Because the author recognises that any tabletop Gor RPG is going to be about sword play and adventures first, with the erotic overtones of that world mostly on show in the background to add spice and kink to the decadent nature of Gorean society.

And here it comes down to your personal preferences. If you don’t like the idea of old school pulp stories having a sexual undertone, then of course this game is never going to be your thing, in much the same way I don’t really take much to Cyber Punk or Japanese Manga. But reading the book you’d probably be surprised how readily accessible it is as a complete body of work to anyone who is interested in pulp Science Fantasy games.

What James does very successfully here is he takes all the interesting and imaginative elements of the Gorean world – elements that are often lost or submerged beneath tedious copy and paste diatribes on the nature of the sexes in the later books (and one thing that can’t be denied, Gor is probably one of the most detailed and fleshed out worlds in pulp fiction) – and he plays to its strengths, playing down the exasperating aspects that even the most enthusiastic John Norman fan could probably live without.

So yes, it’s first and foremost an RPG of ‘High Adventure’ that benefits from a decadent setting that either appeals or doesn’t appeal. If you have set your mind to hating anything to do with Gor, well, this game probably isn’t going to win you over, but if you’ve simply heard it’s controversial, you may be surprised to see how the subject matter has been handled here.

The game mechanics are lifted squarely from the open source D6 system that powered the original Star Wars RPG – a system that incorporates ‘wild dice’ to produce extreme effects at either end of the spectrum. It’s simple enough to be picked up by people who are new to RPGs, but elegant enough that it can provide the sort of feel you want from a game that evokes heroism and larger than life adventures.

Gor’s strict caste system lends itself well to character templates, and although the most appealing one for me is obviously ‘head strong, condescending, reassuringly superficial, and somewhat overconfident agent of the sinister Kurii,’ you can if you wish role-play a builder instead.

Though honestly? A builder? Why would you? 🙂

The black and white art by Michael Manning is all bespoke and with only one or two exceptions, evokes the complex world of Gor very well indeed. I’d best describe it as a comic book take on Aubrey Beardsley with its solid chiaroscuro style. The exception for me at least are the faces of the Kurii that look a bit too cartoon like and not nearly ferocious enough. In some of the illustrations you feel like you want to give them a great big hug and stroke their lovely soft fur, and indeed, there appear to be one or two pictures where slave girls are indeed doing just that (Disclaimer: in real life, never actually attempt to stroke or hug a Kur). On the other hand, the pictures on pages 25 and 56 are just sublime and worth the price of admission alone.

Grim Note: The Kur are – much like many of Lovecraft’s creations, more horrifying on the page than when brought to life in art, but we did our best 🙂

Despite the single minded tone of the official books, the game is quick to assure us that it is designed to accommodate any manner of interpretations of Gor. It’s quite conceivable that a group of player characters could be anti-slavery, for example, odd as that might seem to John Norman himself. And it wouldn’t be that difficult to run a Gor game in the style of Robert E Howard’s Hyborian age, with the added flavour of the secret cold war between the enigmatic Priest Kings and the savage Kurii lurking in the background.

Moving on to the second volume (which was a bit of a beast to download to be honest) we have a hefty compendium of easily digestible background entries in an A to Z format, made more fun by randomly placed interjections by the author writing as an Earth man brought to Gor to live for a few years as a roving scribe. Breaking up what is essentially 202 pages of encyclopaedia entries, with a series of (often) humorous insights and anecdotal observations into everything from Samos of Port Kar to Pleasure Slaves, makes for fun reading, and my only criticism here is there isn’t more of it. It’s a stylistic flourish that I would love to see carried over into supplementary books, especially ones that flesh out specific regions of Gor.

Grim Note: I didn’t want to overstep my bounds as an author, rather than a game designer, in this creative writing element. I kept it shorter than I might otherwise have done if I were more self indulgent, but I will consider adding more to the supplementary material.

As I well know (because I role-play there), the Internet has long had a sizeable presence of ‘role-players’ gaming Gor in various forms in chat room based sites (not to mention the vast population of such people in Second Life) and it would be very cool indeed if this game with its simple enough rule system that lends itself very well to the dice rolling programmes in Gor based chat rooms, became a standard rule set for people to take their role-play further than it currently stands. It has that potential over and above the more usual tabletop format of role-playing games and it would be a vast improvement on the current anarchic system whereby two players simply argue about who stabbed who successfully with a sword.

Taking into account its small press origins, this is an impressive and inexpensive role-playing game that succeeds in bringing the full flavour of its source material to the tabletop. To my mind it presents a far more elegant and cohesive game setting than, say, the bloated and sprawling world of Pathfinder, and it has the potential to be expanded into all manner of meaty supplements.

High on my wish list would be adventure/sourcebooks for the various regions of Gor – in particular the Tahari, the Northern reaches of Torvaldsland, the Panther Girl forests and the Jungle interior. Taking one of those regions, populating it with fleshed out locations and a format of say, 101 adventure seeds, or perhaps a sprawling campaign on the scale of ‘Shadows of Yog Sothoth’, would make for a very cool package indeed.

And I can but dream of a source pack specifically tailored to haughty, over confident agents of the Kurii…

So, all credit to James Desborough who seems to have pulled off the near impossible, when you consider how toxic the concept of Gor can be in certain quarters.

Five stars, which frankly is four stars more than I’d give to the tawdry and demeaning plays of Boots Tarsk Bit. Needless to say, I of course only watch those plays periodically to remind myself how offensive they are… 😉

#RPG – A Nice Review of Tales of Gor

John A. left the following review over on RPGNOW (where ToG is currently rated 4/5 stars).

“Well first let me say that I’m very excited to see a Gor table-top role-playing game. It is a book series that is certainly deserving of such a treatment. Second, the system itself uses the D6 system, which if you are an older gamer such as myself, may be familiar with. West End used it for their Star Wars game and many other products. And I must say it works here, very well.”

“Third, the pdf itself. I never knew Postmortem Studios exisited before stumbling upon this game. I will say that if the products are as half as good as Gor, I’ll be a repeat customer to Postmortem Studios. Gor is packed full of detail and beautiful artwork. The art really reminds me of the old book covers by Boris Vallejo. They scream GOR! Postmortem jammed this game full of background information on Gor. Every book of Norman’s Gor series has a short summary. The world is detailed out along with the people.”

“Just from the small amount of reading I’ve done so far, I can guarantee I will not be left in the dark on an issue about Gor. The treatment of the “adult content” is done very well and there is even a breakdown of how much and ways how to apply it to your Gorean game! At $9.99 this book is a must buy for anyone who is a fan of Gor. In fact, if your are a fan of Conan, John Carter, Tarzan, etc. you should buy it just on its pulp-action quotient alone!I’ll be buying the companion encylopedia quickly!”

You can buy it HERE.

(You’ll have to log in and set your account to view adult content)

 

 

#RPG – Tales of Gor Preview, reviewed

You can read that review HERE, but I wanted to take the opportunity to reply to a point made about the ‘uneasy skirting around its non-PC nature’.

I am not, by any stretch, a PC fellow and I take pride in not kowtowing to the unreasonable demands of the ‘SocJus’ mob – especially when presenting fiction. However, it would take a sociopath in an isolation tank not to be affected by the intense atmosphere of censorship and (genuine) harassment that goes on around anyone who doesn’t toe that lie.

I have a duty in bringing Gor to the RPG world to present the world of the books as accurately as possible AND to make it accessible. It’s also important to me, and I suspect to fans of Gor as well, to show that there is more to it than swords, sandals and BDSM erotica. That there is a well-realised world with the opportunity for many wildly different kinds of adventures and interpretations.

The broader book doesn’t spend so much time hang-wringing about it, but in a preview (and in the early chapters of the game guide from which those parts were taken) it was – I felt – important to contextualise the material, to defend it and to address these concerns and issues head on.

I suspect, sadly, the game will get a few ‘hate buys’ and some deliberate piracy but I hope that the honest and engaged way I have dealt with the material will buy a few converts, open the game and the Gorean canon to a wider audience, and disarm some of the critics.

Now your humble blue-caste scribe must get back to work!

Ta Sardar Gor!

#RPG – Review – Alpha Blue

Well, from this cover I can clearly see this will be wholesome, uncontroversial fun!

I’d promised Venger a review of Alpha Blue but hadn’t gotten around to it [I got a comp copy, full disclosure]. With Alpha Blue being the latest casualty of policy changes at Onebookshelf and a general, puritanical string to genre and pop culture lately I got the motivation to go ahead with the review. I’m hoping to get hold of Venger for a quick interview about the situation and how the policy works in practice in the near future. If I manage to get the scheduling to work I’ll let you know what’s going on, here.

So Alpha Blue then. It’s a bit of a hard product to review. It’s a science fiction setting that grows out of a science fiction location, with a basic RPG system tacked on. Like my own game, Machinations of the Space Princess, it’s inspired by the camp, pulpy, rather naughty science fiction of the 60s, 70s and 80s – in fact it would make a perfect setting and location for use in MotSP.

The system isn’t really that important here, but it’s a simple D6 based dicepool system that’s perfectly adequate to the task if you don’t have another system you’d prefer to use. The meat and bone of the whole thing is very much the setting and the elements that stem from it. The rules cover all the basics you’d expect, combat, social interaction, cybernetics, science fictional and psychic powers and weird alien abilities. Just not in any huge depth. The tables here can be used for inspiration whatever game system you decide to use.

The universe is detailed fairly quickly and draws obvious derivation in many regards from well-loved films and TV series from the time period. There’s a Federation (in which, amusingly, Earth are the paupers and dead last in terms of culture etc), Draconians – recalling Buck Rogers – and a bunch of other ideas familiar and new, as well as a little bit of near-to-the-knuckle satire and fun-poking of politics and of other game settings (the bit on ‘Space Muslims’ being especially biting).

Alpha Blue itself is a space station – of sorts. This place wanders around the universe, albeit not at an especially hurried pace. Alpha Blue itself is a commentary on our collective hang-ups about sex. Following mankind’s inability to handle its own sexuality, Alpha Blue was constructed as a safe outlet of all of mankind’s collective, pent-up, sexual energy. A combination of an asylum for the oversexed and – eventually – a sort of ‘space Vegas’ where anything goes. It’s now another drifting space station, albeit with an interesting past. A haven for deviancy, criminals, gambling and adventurers.

Alpha Blue itself is very well detailed, while remaining open enough for you to add, alter or incorporate your own material. It’s very much more of a ‘toolkit’ book than something to use straight from the pages. It’s a hard book to review since its main use is as inspiration and a review that revealed too many of the easter-eggs and references within it would spoil the experience of reading it.

Alpha Blue goes a bit further than I normally do in some ways, but that’s mostly a result of my own cowardice and self-censorship. That’s probably why it has gotten into the trouble that it has (though speculation is that it’s a reference in a single paragraph in the book to a ‘rape machine‘ used by an evil faction). It also wears its influences on its sleeve a little more directly than I normally would, in the illustrations within it’s easy to recognise figures like Ming, Klytus, Dr Who and Buck Rogers. The whole thing – and much of the terminology – is somewhat taken from The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue (a porno film with 70s-tastic soundtrack which, if you’re utterly desperate, you can watch on Xhamster.)

All things considered it’s a campy, openly sexual nostalgia fest, probably best approached as a series of inspirational tables and setting components to kitbash into your own settings.

Presentation wise it could be a little cleaner and the art is of very mixed quality. Some of it is very good, some of it is very bad and some of it just doesn’t seem to fit the science-fantasy theme (being, perhaps, more suited to an occult themed book)

Score:
Style: 2.5
Substance: 4.5
Overall: 3.5

#RPG – Review: DUST Adventures

I got my much awaited copy of DUST Adventures, the RPG by Modiphius Entertainment, set in Paolo Parente’s world of DUST, which has been used for model kits, a board game of world domination set in the same universe, comics and two battle games, one a more simplified and swift board-game battle – not too dissimilar to Rebel Assault (though it pre-dates it) and the other a more conventional wargame.

It’s fair to say that I’m something of a DUST fanatic and it’s also fair to say DUST has lost a fair bit of impetus recently due to changing partners from Fantasy Flight and getting embroiled – like so many people have – over fights about Kickstarter money. Here’s hoping the RPG and the new figure releases sets that in a different direction.

Modiphius, of course, are on the up and up – launching off their Cthulhu-themed world war two releases and branching out into a lot of other new projects. They’re definitely ones to watch if they don’t expand too fast – which is always a worry – or their Kickstarter led business model doesn’t fall through in the wake of all these other crowdfunding scandals which, to be fair, haven’t yet embroiled them.

So what’s DUST? DUST is an alternative world war two scenario wherein the German explorations in Antarctica lead them to discover an alien spacecraft buried in the ice and a surviving alien in a life support pod. The real pivot point of the alternative history doesn’t really come in until 1943 when Hitler is assassinated and the deployment of walkers – made using reverse-engineered alien technology and uniquely best suited to the combat conditions in Stalingrad lead to a German victory there.

With the removal of Hitler and the application of super-technology the Germans regroup and are able to go back on the offensive.

To cut a long story short we see the emergence of three great superpowers, the Axis, who are no longer Nazis (a shame really, since Nazis make great baddies), the Soviet Bloc – the SSU – which unites Russia, China and large chunks of South America following Marxist revolutions, and the Allies, which is mostly the United States and the former Empire of the United Kingdom, with a smattering of independent nations here and there.

England has been invaded in a successful Operation Sealion and even America is not untouched, suffering SSU incursions into Florida and Alaska. It’s now 1947 and the allies are hard pressed on every front still behind when it comes to technology and becoming increasingly desperate – when a UFO allegedly crashlands in Roswell, an event that may change the tide of the war again…

Aesthetically DUST has always been rooted in the pulps, bombergirls and pinups and that kind of fast-paced, weird war with uplifted gorillas, zombies, laser weapons, tesla weapons, supersoldiers and power armour has always been what the boardgame has been about, albeit with a harder more serious edge than some other treatments of the same concept.

With that out of the way let’s get into the game itself.

System

Characters creation is fairly simple, you toss a few points into a handful of statistics, select a few overlapping skill packages that represent your former life and experience and then you’re good to go. Characters in the DUST RPG are essentially the same as the heroic characters from the boardgame and wargame, super-tough heroes with special abilities that take them over and above the norm.

The game uses a fairly simple dice-pool system, again derived from the board-game and wargame and while you can use special dice (marked with targets, faction symbols and shields) you can – thankfully, also use normal dice counting 5-6 as the ‘target’ which is, typically, a hit. To succeed at a task you’ll be rolling a dicepool of Statistic+Skill and sometimes an Advanced skill on top. For example, a sniper might roll Mobility+Firearms+Sniper Rifle in taking their shot. Most of the time when you’re doing something of ‘average’ difficulty, you’ll be rolling to aim for two successes. Keep in mind that the whole system is skewed towards the heroic level, so an average person only has 1 in any statistic and probably only 1-2 in any skill, so some poor Chinese conscript is likely to only be rolling two dice with their attack and for those following along at home that’s only a one-in-nine chance of succeeding – without adding any more complications.

For players, they can push themselves beyond their normal capacity by using Action Points, a game-altering mechanic that along with their more unusual abilities lets them bend the game to favour the heroes. While there’s no explicit suggestion that the Games Master have Action Points of their own to spend, I would strongly suggest doing so.

The system itself is fairly intuitive from there, all the sorts of mechanics you’d broadly expect from a dicepool system. Damage gets a little complicated, especially compared to the existing boardgame where a point of damage is a casualty for a normal soldier and a level of damage for a hero. Here you get ‘capacity’ for mental damage, physical damage and non-lethal damage and everyone’s going to get at least two points in it, which can impact somewhat negatively on the pulp feel of gunning down whole units of enemy soldiers at a time and may have been an aesthetically compromising rules decision here.

Presentation

The game is hardback and just over 200 pages in length, it’s well put together and full colour throughout, though a lot of the art has the muddiness and lack of clarity that a lot of game art does these days. The layout is a bit cramped and this is not helped by a nearly two inch border column either side of the page spread which is occasionally filled with sidebar information and in-game fiction, but more often left blank. The page real-estate this takes up could, perhaps, have been better used to space out and present some of the content in a clearer way, or to include more background information on aspects of the gameworld that are under-explained, such as Japan.

A major disappointment for me was the art, not so much its execution, but its content. There are too many photographs of miniatures in here, fair enough that the makers of DUST are primarily in the model business, but to me it never looks good for much the same reasons as TV show games never look that good if they fill their pages with still images from the show. Art just works so much better thematically. Still, it wasn’t just that but that the pinup aesthetic so integral to DUST’s development and history had been so vastly toned down.

Call it sexism or whatever if you like, but the pinup is emblematic of the era and has been integral to DUST’s appeal since its inception lending it its unique visual style and supporting its cast of what you might call ‘strong female characters’. For them to be downplayed and largely absent is extremely disappointing.

The other disappointment is the lack of expanded detail on the game world. I was hoping to find out more about the background of the game world than what I have already gleaned from the wargame materials but there’s not much extra here – something that would have sold the book to non-RPG fans who are just fans of the game and its world.

Scores

I give marks out of five, before anyone jumps on me, and three is ‘average’.

On style I have to, sadly, give the game a three out of five. While it’s competently executed the muddiness of the art and the seemingly deliberate avoidance of the pinup aesthetic dramatically compromises the presentation of the book. While the material in it is sufficient to play it is cramped, sometimes hard to reference and has a lot of wasted space.

On substance I again give the book a three. There was a missed opportunity here to expand on the game world’s background, tease material for forthcoming releases and go into detail and this was missed.

Overall that gives DUST adventures a 3, an average score, but this is largely down to my investment in the broader game world and the intellectual property as a whole.

I would still recommend the game, but contextually within the IP as a whole. DUST Adventures reads more like a companion volume to the rest of the material, rather than necessarily as a stand-alone game of its own.

I’ll still be playing it.

[Review] Destiny: The Taken King

Destiny

I already liked Destiny.

This is an unpopular position to take and has made many people very angry.

I could always see the game within the game, the lore, the secrets, the hints of Big Ideas(tm). I enjoyed rooting them out, browsing the revealed grimoire information online (find the dead ghosts myself?) and figuring out what was going on and who my character was in this universe.

Of course it had some flaws. Not least hiding all that rich lore and story away where your average player wasn’t going to bother with it. Being limited to FPS gameplay. Becoming repetitive. Relying far too much on the grind. Relying far too much on multiplayer. All the rest of it. Plus it had the problems all MMOs have where everybody has done all those heroic things so nobody has any unique acts of heroism, plus the world never truly changing despite your actions.

Still. I loved it. The progression. The customisation. The lore. The look and feel. The world. The Big Ideas. It was just a flawed presentation that might have worked better as an RPG (so I made one…)

Previous Expansions

Neither House of Wolves nor The Dark Below really did much to change any of this. House of Wolves filled in a bit of lore about The Reef and the Queen and her Brother (whom, one suspects, may have had a Game of Thrones relationship…) and the Fallen who had settled there as well, The Dark Below took the mask away from a big enemy and gave us a bit more to understand about the Hive, but really this was more of the same.

The Taken King

The Taken King is NOT more of the same.

The most jarring thing about The Taken King is how it has rejigged everything. Your ‘Light’ is now more akin to a ‘gear score’ in standard MMORPGs and, once you get past how jarring it is to lose all your old unupgradable gear (I almost cried) this change to the system and the gear subsystems is great. Just don’t forget you can upgrade purples to have higher attack/defence from other gear and don’t discard them, like your humble author (who probably shouldn’t have played all day).

On the other hand, you get swords now.

Story-wise presentation is much better now and… here be spoilers… the plot makes good use of Nolanbot, Cayde-6 (Nathan Fillion) and Eris Morn (Morla Gorrondona – which might have been a better name for the character, come to that) when it comes to exposition and really starts to, finally, bring some of your allies to life.

Now, I actually liked Dinklebot’s delivery (another unpopular opinion which has made many people angry) and find Nolanbot worse, but the way they’ve improved the ghost’s interactions and exposition – including scanning things for pure story reason during missions and patrols – is better.

You now have lore in the game, where you can get at it.

Patrols have a minor overhaul and have been more integrated into missions, you also get mysterious signals with unclear objectives you have to figure out.

The questlines dealing with The Taken King and leftovers from House of Wolves are better integrated, better explained, more ‘present’ as story and just generally better.

I haven’t bothered with PvP yet (I loathe PvP and only engage in it out of necessity or sufferance), but I’m told that the new Mayhem Mode is a lot of fun and that there are eight new maps. The most interesting new map is set in the European Dead Zone, which holds out promise for the future that we may get more content set on Earth and outside the now monotonously familiar Russian patrol zones.

Personally I’m holding out for Saturn, Jupiter and their many moons coming along in the future.

Guardians

Each Guardian now gets access to a third subclass that they can obsessively level up, can now level up to 40 and can further refine their gear to absurd and obscene levels.

Titans now get to be Sunbreakers, a solar class with all sorts of explosions and smashing powers.

Warlocks get to be arc-empowered lightning-throwers as the Stormcaller subclass.

Hunters now get to be void-empowered bowmen, kind of like the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon ranger. Playing a Hunter this is what I have gotten to play so far and I honestly find it a little lacklustre. More effective in team play, playing solo it just doesn’t seem to have the sheer, devastating power of the arcblade attacks and, once I’ve levelled it up completely, I’ll be changing back.

All things considered…

This is much more like the game Destiny should have been at launch. Finally the complete game we deserved. If it had started with this sort of level of presentation and polish I don’t think we’d have seen the harsh kinds of reviews we did. With the changes I would up my original review score of 3.75/5 to 4/5. There’s still some issues with the PvP necessity, more in-game presentation of lore needs to happen and we need new places to explore and conquer (the Dreadnaught is just too much like the Moon).

It’s also left some new things unexplained and taken some major NPCs out of the game (or has it…?) before we had a chance to really connect with them.

Still, things are really starting to look up.