Where I read…

Alien: Chapter 4. Combat and Panic

Continuing my read-through of the Cinematic Starter Kit. Chapter four starts with some definitions. We learn that maps are divided into zones, and that zones are flexibly defined, “from a few steps across to 25 meters”, essentially, unless a room is huge, it’s one zone. Time is measured in Rounds (5 to 10 seconds), Turns (5 to 10 minutes) for Stealth (more on this below) and Shifts (5 to 10 hours) for longer term things like Recovery.

In a chapter entitled Combat and Panic it might be strange to find a large section on avoiding combat. But Stealth mode is such a vital trope of the films to replicate, whether it’s the haunted house horror of Alien, the Vietnam of Aliens or even the caper mode of Resurrection. In one turn, humans can move through two zones, or spend the whole turn in the space to do a thing, such as access a data terminal. The GMCs, human or alien, must obey the same rules but many aliens can move faster.

Passive enemies can be detected as soon as you move into a zone, or even further away if you have line of sight. Passive, is I feel the wrong word here. I was confused thinking it meant hidden, like the Alien in the shuttle at the end of the first film. But what it really means is unengaged, not hunting you down. Even such an unengaged enemy will see you as soon as you see them, unless you are sneaking (rolling mobility against their observation).

Active enemies are those that are hiding, or sneaking up on you. You can spot them with an observation roll if they are sneaking up on you. But if they are hiding, you won’t spot them unless you tracked them to a spot with a motion tracker, or accidentally look exactly in their hiding place. The motion tracker that was a staple of the movies works up to four zones, ignoring line of sight (though of course you can’t shoot the enemy until you actually do have line of sight – if they are small you might also need an observation roll).

Initiative is, like Forbidden Lands, based on the draw of a card numbered 1-10, and then playing in that order. I am sure there will be Talents about drawing a choice of cards in the full game. Two PCs bale to speak to each other can swap cards, and of course we know there is a close combat stunt about taking an opponent’s card. Not quite sure how that plays with fast moving aliens, who normally seem to draw two cards, and act on both. Scary!

Again like Forbidden Lands, you get one slow and one fast action, or two fast actions. There is a list of example slow and fast actions, but it’s pretty intuitive. Some actions can take place out of turn order, for example parrying an attack, but they still count against your two actions per round limit. Sneak attacks (testing mobility vs observation) give you one free action, fast or slow before initiative cards are drawn.

It’s worth rehearsing resolution. To hit you roll your close combat skill, one success (6) does whatever damage rating your weapon does (mitigated by armour perhaps) extra success can do more damage, or you can spend them to swap initiative, disarm your opponent, push them over, or grapple them.

They may choose to block you, and you can block their attacks too of course. You must declare your intention to block before they roll, for every success you roll, you can choose to parry each of their successes, disarm, or indeed counter attack, choosing to take whatever damage they were dealing out, so that you can sneak a knife in their gut.

There’s a new action (I think) exclusive to Alien. You can push your engaged opponent into short range (so that you or someone else can shoot them). Given how often the players in our UKGE games pushed each other, I must admit it’s a very useful rule to have.

Which brings us onto ranged combat. same mechanic as above, but a different skill of course and some interesting modifiers. Shooting at a target as small as a chestburster, for example, means -2 dice on your roll.

Autofire works differently to Coriolis. In Alien, declaring autofire adds two base dice and one point of stress (and the accompanying die) to your roll. Extra successes can be directed at additional targets (within short range of the original). Auto fire doesn’t empty your clip like it does in Coriolis, but any 1s rolled on a stress die indicate you have to reload, as well as making a panic roll. The idea being that unstressed, you can manage your ammunition, but in the heat of battle it’s easier to find yourself with an empty clip. Is it realistic? Not exactly. But it does emulate the spirit of the movies.

In another difference from Coriolis, you don’t get to spend stunts (extra successes) on critical injuries, you must break your opponent. And of course if you are broken you must roll your own critical injury. It’s easier to break opponents that in Coriolis as Health is based on strength alone, not strength plus quickness, as in Coriolis. But if you are broken, somebody with medical aid skill can help you recover, or after one turn, you recover one point automatically. Most of the other Y0E games rely on someone else being there to get you back on your feet, so I think this rule suggests that you might be alone more than in other games.

If you want to kill a broken human, you must first fail an empathy roll, and take a stress die (unless you have the Cold Blooded talent of course).

And so to stress dice.

You’ve been collecting these as you have played, one of two doesn’t matter so much, indeed they give you a slightly better chance of success. But now you have three or four, and the consequences of a panic roll are more serious.

When you roll a one on any of the stress dice, (and in some other situations, such as when you are attacked by a creature you have never seen before – we forgot that at UKGE, I just gave them an extra stress die), you must make a panic roll: 1d6 plus the number of stress dice you currently have, and consult a table. Results of 1-6 are “keeping it together” but seven or more and bad things happen. For example: on the seven you jerk nervously, and you and everyone around you takes an extra stress die; on eight you get the shakes, and on nine you drop something. On ten and above you the rolls controls your actions to some extent: you freeze, or you are forced to seek cover or you scream. The latter two cathartic responses actually let you lose one stress die, but again, everyone around you gains one.

On thirteen (only a risk if you have seven or more stress dice) you flee uncontrollably. And everyone else must make a panic roll too. I won’t spoil 14 and 15.

Panic lasts one round if specified, or one turn (5-10 minutes), or until you are broken. Someone else can calm you down with a successful Command roll.

A whole turn spent resting in a safe area let’s you lose a stress die, in a new rule (new since to the cinematic starter kit since we first saw it, you can also interact with your signature item in a significant way to reduce stress.

Towards the end of the chapter is a section dealing with other hazards, including conditions such as Starving, Dehydration, Exhaustion, and Freezing, plus: vacuum; falling; explosions; fire; disease; radiation; drowning; and suffocation. Space is Hell indeed. Then there is a section on synthetics and a little bit, for players I guess, on Xenomorphs. This is written in a way that gives very little away but explains that the GM is not cheating when the Xeno gets twice as many actions as everyone else.

Alien: Chapter 3. Skills

Alien, Where I read...

Before we continue with the read through, let’s pause and head back to the credits page (page 2 on the PDF). What’s this?

Dave and I are listed as play testers! That’s nice🙂. We did offer feedback from our games, I wonder if anything has changed?

I have spotted at least one so far. As I predicted yesterday, Victory Points no longer exist. Instead we have Story Points. But that’s enough looking back, let’s crack on with Chapter 3. And let’s start with Story Points! Buried in chapter three is a new use for these newly named Story points. You can spend them, one for one, for an automatic success, after your roll.

There are twelve skills in this game, just three of each attribute. Not sixteen like in Free League’s other Science Fiction game, Coriolis. And unlike that game, all the skills can be rolled “unskilled”, on the attribute only, if you don’t have points in the skill. Attributes, skills and gear all contribute to your pool of base dice. Like Coriolis there is no damage to stats or gear for pushing, so you don’t need to split them out.

What you do need to split out are your stress dice. You earn one every time you push, and add it to all subsequent rolls, including the push. Sixes, on base dice or stress dice mean success. So the more adrenaline running through your system, the more successful you can be. But ones rolled on the stress dice mean panic. More on that later. Ones on stress dice mean something else as well. If you are testing Ranged Combat, and firing a weapon with a limited magazine, then that magazine empties.

There is interesting advice here in a boxout which should be heeded. Don’t roll too often say the authors:

In the ALIEN roleplaying game, a dice roll is a dramatic moment. Pushing rolls increases stress and can trigger panic in your character. With that in mind, you should never roll dice unless it is absolutely necessary. Save the dice for dramatic situations or tough challenges. In any other situation, the GM should simply allow you to perform whatever action you wish

Our experience suggest this is good advice. In my co-host Dave’s first playtest, he made his players roll the dice too often. Many rolls were pushed and stress points earned. Panic rolls can cause more stress, so there was a sort of cataclysmic chain reaction. I ran a playtest with that in mind, and made fewer (too few?) rolls, and didn’t experience a Panic cascade.

Dice rolls can be modified by difficulty (ranging from +3 for trivial actions, to -3 for formidable actions – though I don’t think we should be rolling for trivial actions, considering the advice above). Or, you can get help from other PCs, as with many Year Zero Engine games, by adding one dice per character helping, up to a maximum of three. Some rolls, for example when you use Mobility to sneak, can be opposed by the NPC with an Observation roll, you have to get more successes than they do. NPCs never push their rolls.

If it’s not opposed, then one success is all you need (difficulty modifiers are on the dice rolled, not the number of successes needed). And each skill description includes a list of stunts you can spend extra successes on. These include things like; rolling an extra die on a related skill check; completing the task more quickly or quietly; sharing a success with a PC in the same situation; or, in combat, simply dealing more damage.

Finally, for those wanting to compare the skills other Y0E games, they are:

Heavy Machinery (STRENGTH)
Stamina (STRENGTH)
Close Combat (STRENGTH)
Mobility (AGILITY)
Ranged Combat (AGILITY)
Piloting (AGILITY)
Observation (WITS)
Comtech (WITS)
Survival (WITS)
Command (EMPATHY)
Manipulation (EMPATHY)
Medical Aid (EMPATHY)

Alien: Chapter 2. Your Character

Alien, Where I read...

STOP PRESS! I just heard the first batch of the Starter PDF is coming though, so from now on, you will be able to read along with me 🙂

Continuing my “Where I read…” the starter PDF does not include full rules for character creation, but rather gives readers a guided tour of what makes a character. It’s a sort of introduction to the pre-gens included in the scenario.

As usual with Year Zero Engine games, there are four attributes, Strength; Agility; Wits; and Empathy, each with up to five points allocated. A sidebar indicates that Androids generally have higher physical scores. There are three skills attached to each attribute, but there is a whole chapter on skills later.

There are two other stats: Stress starts at Zero, but goes up by one every timid you push a roll; and Health starts equal to your Strength stat. So, I guess damage is not linked directly to the attribute like it is in the Mutant games and Forbidden Lands – you don’t become less effective as you take damage – but your “hit points” are just as few as in those games.

Personal agendas are mentioned briefly, if only to say the campaign version of personal agendas will be covered in the full rules, and that in cinematic adventures you get given personal agendas each act. If you take actions toward you personal agenda during the act, you can remove a point of stress before the next act, and you get a “Victory Point”. We’ll see if this last survives to the published version though, as there was talk from Free League that suggested Victory Points might get changed. You also have buddies and rivals, though with no game mechanics attached to them. If the other Year Zero Engine games are a guide, there will probably be experience points attached to them in campaign play. Androids can’t push skill rolls, don’t suffer stress and never make Panic Rolls. They also suffer damage differently.

Unusually for a RPG, there is a box out on PVP or, player vs player. Basically when tensions get high, the GM warns everyone that PVP is imminent, and the aggressor loses their character.

The most important part of a section on gear is the resource roll. Roll a number of dice equivalent to your resource, and for every 1 rolled, lose a point of resource. Ammo isn’t included as a consumable. We’ll read about that later.

Alien: Chapter 1. Space is Hell

Alien, Where I read...

Today, pre-orders for Free League’s new Alien RPG go live. To inspire you to buy it, I will start a “Where I read…” going through the Starter PDF that will be free to everyone who pre-orders. (Yes, I know I haven’t finished the Where I Read … Liminal, but I will return to that when I am done here. Sorry.)

Effekt co-host Dave and I have been asked to run taster sessions on the Free League stand at UK Games Expo, so we have had access to a not-quite-finished version of the Starter PDF to prepare. When I say not quite finished, I mean, missing a few illustrations, the text is there, all 168 pages of it. I wouldn’t rule out there being a few tweaks between this version and the final one, but I am pretty sure they will be minor.

Anyhow, let’s crack on with Chapter 1. This serves as an introduction to the world, and introduces us to the ships log of Captain Charlize, for whom I fear, things will go badly wrong by the end of the book.

We will be playing among “the rough and tumble colony worlds on the Frontier of known space.” There are three “great powers” in space, the dominant being the United Americas. The largest, not not the most successful economically is probably the Union of Progressive Peoples. I have a soft spot for the Three Word Empire formed from a formal alliance between Britain and Japan, and the merger of Weyland and the Yutani corporation. Weyland Yutani plays well with both the Empire and the United Americas, but it hedges it bets, also owning outright some independent worlds. These and other privately owned planets reject the three super powers and band together as the Independent Core System Colonies. Other companies, BioNational and Seegson being two examples, are also manipulating the national governments and, really, driving colonisation.

The game is set roughly three years after the events of Aliens, and Alien 3. Something of what happened on the prison planet in the third film is known publicly, because of of the prisoners published an ebook, that also implicates Waylamd-Yutani in bioweapons research. Some people argue that Wayland-Yutani may be working with a rouge nation to assume control of the frontier colonies. The chapter includes a timeline, from “Peter Weyland’s infamous TED Talk address of 2023” to the publication and subsequent banning of “Star Beast.”

The rest of the chapter is written for both newbies and experienced players. It starts with what you can play, adding Company Reps to the triad that pre-publicity had already mentioned: colonists, Marines and space truckers. Then there is a description of what the Gamemaster does, and the two different modes of play, saying in cinematic mode “In fact, most of your PCs probably won’t live to see the end of the scenario.” Whichever mode, the key themes of the game are: Space Horror; Sci-fi Action; and A Sense of Wonder. In its last few pages the chapter runs through the tools of the game, character sheets, dice, and cards, before finishing with “What is a Role Playing Game?”

Right at the end of the chapter? Well, if they didn’t know by now …

Liminal Chapter 4 – Game Rules

Liminal, Where I read...

I am sorry, this read-through is taking longer than I expected. Now however, I am laid up with my foot elevated after a really bad ankle twisting, so I have no excuse not to get on with it.

I am going to get tired of saying this, but chapter four begins with more gorgeous art:

Blows me away. Golden apples of the sun indeed*. Then we get into a core mechanic that will be familiar to Traveller grognards – 2d6+skill rating a target number that is usually eight. Thing that male it different from Traveller are your traits – potentially giving you some sort of supernatural bonus; and opposed rolls, where the target number is based on your opponent’s skill plus eight. Unskilled rolls are just 2d6, and the target number rises to ten. If you end up beating the target number by 5 (impossible if you are unskilled) you get a critical success, and there is a list of critical effects the player can choose from, including your team-mate getting an automatic success on a related action, succeeding in a way that impresses somebody, or infuriates someone, or in a way that no one notices. In combat, crits include gaining the initiative, doing extra damage, or interestingly, making yourself a target, thus protecting a crewmate from attack.

Failure isn’t just the absence of success. The GM might sayyou succeed, but taking damage, if such a thing is appropriate, or that your action succeeds but takes longer than you wanted, or attracts undue attention.

But you can avoid failure by spending will, point for point to add to your dice roll. Your will points power your magic though, so don’t spend them all. Will must also be used if you want to take actions when zero or less Endurance (effectively hit points). You can recover 1d6 points of will by invoking your drive.

In this game, I don’t think combat is really the thing, social conflict is the way I imagine most changes are made, but the combat rules seem … functional. They don’t inspire me, but I don’t think they are meant to. Things I like are the abstracted ranges, things I don’t like include target numbers to hit, based on the opponent’s athletics skill. I do like the rules for fighting mobs though, as turning innocent high street shoppers against you is exactly what some fae trickster might do. I especially like the rules for saving the lives of those shoppers in the aftermath of any conflict.

I do like the social challenges though. Unlike many systems where a decent persuade roll is more akin to mind control, this instead imposes a penalty on actions which contradict the persuader’s intentions. You can shake off that penalty at the cost of 1d6 will points, which is a potentially high cost. Maybe it’s better just to do what he fae king wants…

There are rules for experience here too, and two levels of advancement. PCs get five experience boxes. And they can check one for things like closing a case, learning something new about the hidden world, making a critical fail, or advancing the crew’s goal. When all five are checked, you can raise a skill by one, up to your skill cap, and check and advancement box. You have three of these, and when you have checked all three, you can do things like increase your skill cap by one, gain a new Trait, or get a new asset for the crew.

*https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55687/the-song-of-wandering-aengus

Liminal Chapter 3 – Crews and Factions

Liminal, Where I read...

Continuing my read though of the Liminal PDF, I continue to be impressed by the art. Some of it is photographic, heavily digitally manipulated, but even that shows up the paucity of really great creativity in the third edition of Unknown Armies. While I love that game, and value the effort of crowdsource the art, there are few pieces in that large work that, to my mind evoke the spirit of the game and stand and interesting and memorable art in itself. In Liminal, every piece of art feels right.

This chapter introduces factions as well as the concept of the Crew (the adventuring party). But we are promised more detail on the factions in a later chapter. The factions get a mention here, because you might decide you want your crew to be part of one of the Factions. So, if your players are inspired by Rivers of London, their crew could be part of P Division, the magic cops. Or, if they really wanted to play Vampire, they could be politicking within the Sodality of the Crown, the “Camerilla” of this world.

The other factions are:

The Order of St. Bede – Anglican and catholic exorcists
The Mercury Collegium – magical crooks
The Council of Merlin – wizards
The Court of the Queen of Hyde Park or The Court of the Winter King – Fae, or
The Jaeger Family

But, unlike the old World of Darkness games, this one is built to mix and match the occult creatures, so your Crew can include Wizards and Vampires (actually I remember from chapter 2 that players can only be Dhampirs, which have retained their humanity – at least if the listed concepts are a hard limit).

So the rest of the chapter walks you through a session of crew creation. And I wonder if it might have been better coming before the character creation chapter, as it builds the world in which your game takes place. That said, I remember how frustrated I was that character creation is only detailed in the GMs book of UA3, so maybe I won’t go there. In the end, th s is a process that’s moderated by GMs, so if that say go away and make or characters, then we’ll stick them together, or come armed with an idea of who you won’t to be, but we we’ll flesh out characters as we build the world, it’s up to them.

So we start off with a concept. And here the crew concept is definitely freeform, the book only offers “some possibilities”, private investigators, deniable assets of a faction (though we’ll come back to “deniability” later, or people that have been forced together because they share a common enemy.

Just like Unknown Armies, this game recommends the Crew think of a common goal, such as the defeat of of that common enemy, or a; ongoing task like keeping the Hidden World hidden. In the first “box-out” I think have encountered in this game (though there is no box) the author recommends that a character’s drive should not be entire antithetical to the goal of the Crew. Author Paul Mitchener also recognises that the goal needs to force the crew to go out and investigate Cases – just hiding from your enemy does not an adventure make.

Then, each player in the crew chooses one asset that the crew share, with suggestions and including: a base of operations, connections, hangers-on, informants, an occult library, a patron or a hated enemy. All of these, and more , of course help create the world the player characters operate in

Continuing the world building, the GM then presents the players with a list of the factions he plans to use, and each other play in turn names one with with they have a good relationship, and one with whom they have a poor relationship. Only three players can name the same faction as good, at with point the faction becomes an ally to the Crew, or poor, at which point the faction becomes the crew’s enemy. Other names factions will end up with a score of positive or negative one or two, which abstracts the nature of the relationship (and I am sure) will modify dice rolls in play.

For the final bit of worldbuilding, each player comes up with a hook, which should be the springboard for a case, not the whole adventure. Like the pre-credits scene of a TV shoe. It’s up to play to reveal what’s behind that opening scene.

The chapter ends with four example crews, academic researchers, Free-Lance investigators, a Norfolk crime “family”, and, SCD9 – a “deniable” “undercover” unit affiliated to P Division. Though I would argue that, as the illustration features them wandering around in disposable paper SOC coveralls, bagged with the SCD9 logo, they don’t appear either undercover, or deniable 🙂

Liminal Chapter 2 – Character Creation

Liminal, Where I read...

We are introduced to a crew with a group portrait. One of them is, I think, Ygraine from chapter one. There’s a tall lumberjack with glowing eyes who, I guess, will be a werewolf, and a wizard in training and a former police officer. I think we’ll meet all four in examples thoughout the book.

Character creation starts off with a concept and a drive. As I mentioned in my previous post I am coming to this reading pre-equipped with a character I want to build: William Palmer, the Pilgrim.

His concept is easy: cursed with eternal life by the faerie King, he has walked the border between the mundane world and the Hidden for almost 1000 years. His Drive, to end his curse and die.

But we must choose a focus, and here the choices are limited, not freeform + we must be tough, determined or magician. I would argue the William Palmer is determined, but he has used spells more than once, if I recall correctly. You pick up a secret or two in 1000 years. If I must choose between the two I will wait to later in the chapter (or the book) to see haw it works mechanically, but given how rarely he uses magic in the series, I tend towards Determined. (There’s a note here about how a werewolf’s transformation is like a spell, but a werewolf character is not a magician focus, because their shapechangeing is limited to just two forms.)

The player must spend seventeen points on skills, with no skill more than four. Two points in a skill makes you relatively proficient, apparently. There are 21 skills. Traits are supernatural abilities, training or innate advantages that cost one or two points. You have five points to spend. But you can get extra points to spend on traits if you also take supernatural limitations. So I guess you can get extra vampire traits if you also have an aversion to garlic.

You also have three attributes: Endurance, Will and Damage. In many games, your attributes add to, or apply a bonus/penalty to skills. But in this one it’s the other way around. your skills enhance your attribute. Your endurance in eight plus your athletics skill, and will, eight plus your conviction skill. Hmmm I am intrigued to see how these are used mechanically. Your damage is defined by your weapon, it’s d6 for unarmed combat, d6+1 for a knife etc up to d6+4 for a heavy firearm. Again I shall have to wait until I read about the mechanics before I pass judgement, but right now this feels like clashing philosophies – a desire to abstract (mundane) combat because it’s not the heart of the game, yet the need to differentiate between heavy and light weapons for … what? “Tactical” reasons? My touchpoint for abstracted, yet deadly combat is Unknown Armies. We’ll see later on how this compares.

I turn the page, some more great illustration, and then something that catches me unawares – Character Concepts. I had imagined, earlier, that the Concept was entirely free-form. But here with a number of concepts, or archetypes, with suggested “builds”. The Concepts are:

Academic Wizard
Changeling
Clue-up Criminal
Dhampir
Eldrich Scholar
Face
Gutter Mage
Investigator
Knight
Man in Black
Warden, and
Werewolf

Are these just examples or are they the defined list of classes? The book doesn’t make it clear whether players must chose from this list or if they cane make one of their own. It seems freeform enough that making your own shouldn’t be a problem, but the lost seems comprehensive enough to suggest that you shouldn’t need to. I’d prefer some clarity in this matter, but right now I am opting for choosing a concept. If only because one of the Concepts, the Face, seems to work for our man Pilgrim.

Each concept comes with suggested skills (in the face’s case, Art, Business, Education, Charm, Empathy, High Society, Rhetoric – no increased Endurance or Will for us) and traits (Agent of Ravenstower, Graceful, Presence, Rich, Silver Tongue), plus a limitation (Obliged) and a focus (Determined).

Players get 17 points to spend on skills.You can start with no more than four in a skill. This is explained with reference to a Skill Cap which seems over complicated at this point, but other uses for the Skill Cap might become apparent later. Skills at three or higher can have specialities.”an area of focus within a Skill” which “grants a +2 bonus when using a Skill in that area.”

There are 21 skills, seven in each of three areas: physical, mental and social. I am giving my William Palmer Awareness, Melee, Stealth, Survival and Vehicles from the physical list. Five points spent, I could have five of each area, and two extra points, but maybe I should focus more. From mental skills, I’ll choose Art, Business, Education and Lore. I might come back for a point in Medicine. Socially, I’ll take Conviction, Empathy, Rhetoric and Streetwise. Again I am slightly tempted by Taunt – Palmer often solves issues by goading Fae into bad decisions, but I was thinking that’s how I would use rhetoric. Thirteen skills at one point. Four points left to spend. Let’s look at some of the skills in more detail.

William Palmer runs a rare books business, which he inheritable from a friend. He started a trust fund in the twelfth century, to maintain a chapel in which a roman centurion sleeps, but despite these example of business acumen, it’s the bit in the skill description about fae that tempts me to add some points to this skill “When dealing with the Hidden World, the business skill is relevant when it comes to making bargains, which can be a vital survival skill when dealing with the Fae.”

However, with only four points to spend, there are two other skills that deserve the points more. Palmer has picked up a lot of knowledge in his millennium of living on the earth, but it seems, all quite shallow, except for his knowledge of the hidden world, which marks him out from most “hotbloods”, so that deserves an extra point or two. The other one is conviction, Palmer is not the devout pilgrim he once was, but he is still a man of faith. I am tempted to put his conviction up to four, or to make it three but spend a point in the Religious Faith speciality, but in the end, I think I’ll leave it at three and make his Lore three too. All my points are spent.

When it comes to traits the choices are more difficult. But there is one obvious one. Palmer has been known to utter a spell, but isn’t a full fledged magician. There is a Countermagic trait (“You know defensive spells which protect you and others against magical attacks. You can use your Lore Skill as a defence against magic, and can make a Lore skill test to disperse a magical effect. In both cases, this will usually be an opposed roll”) which, if I recall correctly, is pretty much the only sort of magic I have heard him use in the drama.

I am struggling over Rapid Healing.

“You rapidly heal from any injury, recovering d6 points of Endurance every hour. This rapid healing even applies when you have negative Endurance. You even eventually come back from the dead unless decapitated or incinerated. You are resistant to poisons and all but immune to disease.”

Palmer is cursed with immortality, but I believe this doesn’t come with rapid healing. I am sure I have heard references to him taking “years” to recover from injury. That said, in a role-playing game, taking a year or two out to recover isn’t much fun for your fellow players, so were I playing for real, I think I would have to choose this. Except …

“Any character with rapid healing has a flaw—one source of injury from which they cannot regenerate damage. You will not come back from the dead when killed through your flaw.”

Now, if William Palmer had one thing that could definitely kill him, he’d have jumped in a pool of it/stabbed himself with it/swallowed it, or whatever, years ago. He wants to die. I think if I was playing this for real, I’d negotiate with the GM that something can kill Palmer, but only the GM knows what it is.

So, if I took fast healing, despite my doubts, I would have two points left for traits. Palmer isn’t an Agent of Ravenstower (though reading the description, he might have been) or Always Prepared. Despite running a rare books business, he was snot a Bookworm, or a least, he does not exhibit the mechanics of this trait. He is neither Brawny nor Forgettable., Frightening nor Graceful. Oh, but he is an Investigator. Not a policeman or a detective, but a man who can “tell when someone is lying or hiding something, […] and […] find contacts and witnesses.” That trait is worth two points, so that’s all I can have.

I could get more points to spend, if I took on a limitation. And Obliged is the one that is closest to the Pilgrim stories, but Palmer has categorically not given his service to the Fae.

I feel though that this is a game that suits “session zero” style character creation in a group, William might have to choose a different trait if someone else had set their heart on being a policeman.

We finish with four sample characters, the group we met at the front of the chapter, and yes, I had them right.

Where I read: Liminal – Chapter 1

Liminal, Uncategorized, Where I read...

It’s time for another “where I read…” series. I have a a number of books, games I am unlikely to find the opportunity to play anytime soon, that I need to discipline myself to read and absorb. In the coming months, look forward to read-throughs of Vampire V and Phoenix Dawn Command, among others. Right now though, I am going to tackle the slimmest column in my book pile, not just because it will be the quickest, but it’s also the one I know least about and the one I am most interested in.

Among the unfinished draft posts that litter the unpublished area of this blog are more than a few about turning Ben Aaronovitch’s PC Peter Grant series of novels (otherwise known as the Rivers of London series) into a Role Playing Game. The posts are unfinished, and indeed the game is hardly started – just a few scribbled notes about Cortex, Fate and now, of course, the Year Zero Engine.

While I have been timewasting, Paul Mitchener has just got on with with it, producing a book that was Kickstarted a year ago. I did not kick in at the time, as my KS budget was spent, but the PDF just came out on Drive-thru, and being curious, even though I still didn’t really have the budget, I splashed out. To be honest I didn’t really look too deeply into the Kickstarter, as I worried I might be tempted to overspend. So I come to this book with as close to zero knowledge as you can get.

And colour me impressed. The art on the KS looked attractive, but seriously doesn’t do justice to the quality of art throughout the book. There one or two pieces that aren’t quite as good as the others but, by god, this is pretty, very pretty indeed. If I recall, the KS only has print on demand options available, quite rightly for a game with a limited print run, but … it’s so beautiful, this book deserves a proper printing.

Design and layout aren’t bad either, marred (for me) only by one thing: I am a typography snob and while, generally, type choices are excellent (I particularly like the use of Senator) , I am disappointed by the use of Mason for chapters and sub headings. Mason’s gothic stylings became a bit of a cliché on the covers of unlicensed Buffy encyclopaedias, trashy urban fantasy, and second rate witchcraft TV. And it’s use here let’s the quality and imagination of the rest of the book down.

Mason. Ugh!

I think that’s about as rude as I will get on this book though. ‘Cause the rest of the book is gorgeous. And if I am feeling charitable, I guess … I guess you could say that for a game designed to emulate that sort of 90s urban fantasy fiction, it’s at least … appropriate … I suppose.

Anyhow, rant over, let’s look at the content of chapter one. We get a little intro from the changing, Ygraine Green, depicted in one of the lovely portraits that litter this book. Then there is a handy list of the sort of people who are Liminals, though who stand on the boundary between mundane and Hidden worlds, the sort of people your character will be. This list includes werewolves but no vampires (though vampires do exist in this world). The usual “What is roleplaying?” Section includes a dice turn of phrase about the GM:

there is one distinguished player, the Game Master

This firmly classes the GM as a player, which I strongly agree with. A very short note on dice suggests the mechanics are close to Traveller, the example says roll 2d6 and add for a total. But it’s also suggests it might be more than two dice sometimes.

There’s another monologue from a former police officer which illustrates the matter-of-factness which which Liminals regard the Hidden World. Then some facts for us players: magic, vampires, werewolves, the fae, and ghosts are real in this world. Though firmly set in Britain, “the myths and beings of the world of Liminal are often international in origin, sometimes due to the metaphorical (rather than literal) ghost of the British Empire.” There are “factions” organising the activities of magicians, vampires etc, and at least two mundane factions “in the know”, one in the church (which interestingly works across both Protestant and catholic branches) and one in the police. Most mundanes dinky think to looks for signs of the supernatural, but they are easy enough to find if you do choose to look for them.

Then there is a summary of the other chapters in the book. The next chapter deals with character creation, the third is about forming the characters into a crew (will I find I prefer doing it the other way round I wonder?). The rules are in chapter four and magic in five. Chapter six describes the various factions in more detail, seven is a bit of a gazetteer. GM advice is in chapter eight, and chapter nine is a “bestiary”. There are two adventures in the last chaper. Called “cases” they reveal the influence of PC Peter Grant, and the police procedural in general, on the game.

And indeed, over the page, the Grant series tops the list of “Inspirational Media”. Others include Neverwhere, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Hellblazer, Being Human, and Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales. I am slightly disappointed not to see some classics of children’s fiction, Alan Garner’s books, including The Owl Service, and American author Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence, in the list. A somewhat less disappointing omission, or less surprising at least, because hardly anyone listens to the radio nowadays it seems, is the excellent BBC Radio 4 series Pilgrim, by Sebastian Baczkiewicz. Cursed to eternal life by the fairy king, the pilgrim, William Palmer is a true Liminal, walking the boundaries of the mundane and Hidden worlds. I might see how easy he is to create when I read chapter two.

Forbidden Lands – Artefacts, Encounters and Adventure Sites

Forbidden Lands, Where I read...

The potential spoilers come think and fast in the last three chapters of the Gamemasters’ Guide. And so, we come to the last instalment of my “Where I Read…”

There is hardly anything I can say about the artefacts chapter without spoiling anything. Eighteen artefacts are described, potential sites of discovery suggested in each description. But the authors stress that’s its entirely up to you, where your players actually find these things. Unlike the demons in the bestiary, there is nothing randomly generated I can get excited about (Though there is a d66 table if you want to randomly decide which of the 18 artefacts your players discover). If you want to know more you’ll have to get out there, exploring the Forbidden Lands. Or volunteer to be GM.

The Encounters chapter starts with a table, cross-referencing d66 with terrain type, to provide a number between zero and 43. Zero means nothing happens, each of the other 43 encounters are subsequently described, with stats where required, or pointing you to stats elsewhere in the book. These encounters are not just wandering monsters. They could become adventure hooks. Some are repeatable, but others, once played through, couldn’t really happen to the same party twice. That’s not a problem though, if you had nots about what happened last time, and one of the NPC survived, you could continue the story, or take inspiration from the encounter but change the details, or simply re-roll. There are some intriguing references to SIMPLE, VALUABLE and PRECIOUS finds, suggesting, a random treasure table.

And indeed, in the final chapter, Adventure Sites, we discover a number of such tables, beginning on page 186. There are d66 tables for Simple, Valuable and Precious Carried Finds, and Finds in a Lair. Each lists the item, it’s value in coin, and its encumbrance. The items range from coin (the most common result – a few coppers in simple carried finds, to gold silver and copper in precious finds in the lair) to, on a roll of 66 on the precious lair table, an artefact, which explains the random artefact table in the chapter. When the encumbrance column shows a number rather that usual light, normal or heavy, that’s the number of people required to carry it. There’s a supplementary table of oddities, which modifies the items you rolled in other tables: it might be bent, burned or have bite marks in it, for example, each of which halves the value. Or it might turn out to be twice as valuable to a dwarf.

All these tables though are preceded by extensive tables for creating a random adventure site. The chapter starts off with a very important note, which applies to both the pre-written sites, and the ones you may generate.

An adventure site is not a scenario in the traditional sense. It has locations, NPCs and events – but it does not provide a pre-determined narrative for the adventurers to follow. Instead, they can interact with an adventure site in many different ways

In fact there may well be more than one narrative opportunity at each site. It’s up the players, and the GM to make the site into a narrative of their very own. Over them, the player character actions might well change sites so that when they return, other narrative opportunities are on offer.

You start off creating a new site by defining it as a village, dungeon or castle. In play this may well be prompted by what’s on the map, but if you want, for example if there are ruins marked on the map, you can roll randomly. a village is then defined by its size (population) and age, before moving on to how it’s ruled. You can roll twice on a d66 to create a bickering Rust Brother or Brutal council, for example.

Other d66 roles give the village:

a problem, including widespread drunkenness or Bandits;
a claim to fame, delicious bread or strange disappearances; and
an oddity like inbreeding or a Old Burial Site

Then depending on the size of the village you roll for between zero and eleven “institutions” such as inns, stables, militia etc. There are an inn generator too, with randomly rolled names like The Rumping Druid or The Singing Jar. A few more rolls provide each inn with an oddity, speciality and special guest. So you might see a singing sister serve blood soup to a secretive spellbinder (shouldn’t that be “Sorcerer”? Ed.).

Your Dungeon on the other hand can be anything between d6 and over 1,100 years old. With between d6 and 6d6+50 rooms. It could have had one of seven original uses, one of ten builders, elves to a demon (with ten motivations, vengeance to passion) or developed naturally. You can discover one of ten fates for those original builders too. It might nave have between one and three different inhabitants (or groups) from a choice of 24, and one of 36 oddities. There are seventeen different types of entrance (shades of #D&Dgate).

There is even a dungeon room generator, that allows you to create a dungeon on the fly, with treasure and traps, as the players are exploring it! (Or in advance if you prefer)

Similarly, Castles can be defined with random rolls to determine:

Type and size;
Age;
Original purpose;
Founder (and the founder’s Reputation)n
Condition;
History;
Inhabitants (including an “Is it really empty?” table or a “Who has moved in?” table);
It’s Oddity of course (gotta have an oddity); and,
It’s name.

But wait! We’re not done with the random generation. There are stat blocks here for typical NPC, and else where of course for other kin and followers of religious orders. But here too is the table for discovering a their occupation, defining characteristic (from eye patch to unkempt eyebrows, which on reflection doesn’t seem far enough for a “from … to” example) and a personal quirk.

Reading though the adventure sites themselves, you can imagine them being created by rolling on these tables (well maybe not for Inn names), and they demonstrate what a powerful tool set this is. Part of me really wants to run a totally emergent story, relying on dice and the imagination of the players to create the narrative. With just a little note taking after each session, a savvy GM would quickly work out when to forgo a dice roll in favour of reintroducing a NPC or developing situation from a previous adventure.

So this is the last of my posts in this “Where I read…” and I have to say, I am very excited for this game. We played an adventure already (and recorded it, so you will soon have the opportunity to hear us groking the rules), and o think we all love it. It was meant to be a one-off, to fill a gap in our schedule, but my players already want another session and are growing into their randomly generated characters.

All hail the return of the dice!

Forbidden Lands – Bestiary

Forbidden Lands, Where I read...

At the end of this chapter there are lists of normal animals, from Bear to Crocodile, and Dog to Scorpion. I am a bit disappointed that there are not more exotic mounts – the lists include only Horse and Warhorse as obvious mounts. I hope we might get some more when the cards are published. For now though, I have let my goblin ride a wolf, and my Elf a Stag. But you don’t want to read about those. You want monsters.

Now we are getting into spoiler territory. I am going to keep my notes on Monsters to a minimum, because such creatures, their abilities, behaviours and weaknesses are things that players should discover in play.

But to begin with it’s worth talking about rules for monsters, or rather, how the rules are different for monsters. You generally can’t parry, grapple, or feint monsters, and being xxxxxxxx, they are immune to xxxx attacks (actually that last might count as a spoiler, so redacted). You can disarm and shove some monsters but you will need multiple successes to do so, depending on their strength. The key difference is that they Strength rating behaves more like traditional hit points. Unlike player-characters they don’t get less effective as they take more damage.

Although actually their melee attacks are not based on strength anyway – one of the coolest features of the bestiary is that each monster has six monster attacks. Six, so that you can choose to roll randomly, although if you prefer your monsters to be more tactically astute, you can choose which attack to you. Each attack tells you how many dice to roll, and how much damage a single success does. Extra successes each add one more point of damage.

As I said, I am going to keep most of the monsters secret from any players who might be reading. But by way of example, let’s imagine you see a huge figure with a bulls head approaching, carrying a two-handed axe. This isn’t a monster unique to the system, but a Minotaur. the creatures monster attacks range from Bull Fist (using eight base dice to deliver at least one point of damage and blunt force crits) to:

STOMPING ATTACK! The Minotaur jumps high in the air, landing hard on top of the adventurer. The victim is felled to the ground if hit. The attack is performed using twelve Base Dice and Weapon Damage 1 (blunt force).

A demon, but probably not the one you are going to meet…

My favourite monsters though are Demons, and I can tell you a little bit more without spoiling your players’ fun, because Demons are randomly generated! Five tables, each d66, with some results asking for a further random roll, means you are unlikely to meet the Demon I just created. It looks human, but when it opens its eyes or mouth it in filled with a blinding inner light (Fear attack, 9 base dice). It’s fingers are calcified into fearsome claws (7 base dice, 2 damage) but it also carries a trident. Don’t let it touch you or it could take you over (works like Rank 3 Puppeteer spell). Only music will drive it away so make sure you have perform skill.