It has been a busy time and a lot has happened in our world, so before I talk about other things, I am going to hit the highlights.
Adamant Entertainment has license China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station et,al for a new fantasy RPG, Tales of New Crobuzon. Not a D20 or OGL variant, and not Adamant’s own house system, but a completely new game. I have been a huge fan of Gareth Michael Skarka, as well as an acquaintance and friend for quite a long time, since his work on the original Hong Kong Action Theatre, at least. I think that the combination of Miéville’s deconstruction of fantasy tropes and archetypes coupled with Gareth’s unique vision of RPGs will work well together. I also think that his decade-long relationship with the author will eliminate much of the friction that comes with adapting an author’s work for a new medium. I hope the reader looks forward to this as much as this columnist does.
There was also a big announcement from our friends at Hero games, one of the few mid-tier companies that has had almost unequaled success. Hero will undergo its sixth edition in 2009. Steve Long and Darren Watts will do their normal excellent job, starting with development discussions right now on the Hero Games forums. This on the heels of the announcement that Cryptic Studios has licensed the Champions intellectual property for a new multiplayer game much like their existing City of Heroes game. Kudos to Hero, and best of luck with the Sixth Edition.
Mongoose Publishing will cease printing their own products and return to using commercial printers immediately. Mongoose had been plagued by production problems, which lead them to taking their press in-house in the first place, but the added expense and stressors of running their own was too little return on investment. Here is hoping them success and that printing issues are a thing of the past. I think this is great news for the upcoming Traveller reboot. Coincidentally, Mongoose also announced they are ceasing production of figures for their Babylon 5 miniatures game. They will be offering online support products, and hope to find a larger market in the future to support their miniature games.
My hope for the SF renaissance in RPGs is starting to materialize. Marc Miller’s Traveller5 is delayed, but some other interesting games are coming up on the radar, have come to this columnist’s attention, or have been recently released.
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica has been out for some time, and I understand sales are brisk, but having read the book I cannot understand why. Let me remind the readers that I do not like to write negative reviews, but as I have mentioned before I think I have to. The book itself is large, hardbound, and well made. The art is evocative and in most cases directly from the show. It even uses the images and characters from the series. However, the rules have all of the same problems we saw in Serenity, with no real reinforcement for genre tropes. While the developers felt that writing from an in-character perspective would be interesting, this reviewer thinks it is both poorly executed and poorly edited. So much so that even a typo on the first page of the introduction, written by Richard Hatch, is uncorrected. The game is incomplete with no unified technology system and no real spacecraft construction and combat rules. This is an incredibly broad failing in a Science Fiction game. Most especially one that has space battles as such an integral part of the continuing story.
Margaret Weis Productions has announced that the house system is now called Cortex, and will have its own generic rules set next year. Let me be frank, this reviewer cannot see this as being a success. While there are some nuggets of goodness wrapped up in the chaff, almost all of the appeal of Serenity and BSG are setting. Legions of fans will still buy the Battlestar Galactica and Serenity RPGs as well as any support materials for those games forthcoming, but not a standalone system book with no color or flavor.
BASH SF
In some random wanderings along the intertubes I came across BASH! SF Roleplaying. The game is not brilliant, but it does appear balanced and mostly complete. The art is very uneven, ranging from inspired, to simply awful. Now the art does not have anything to do with how the game plays, but the cover is atrocious and leaves an awful first impression. BASH! SF does have partial rules for ships, robots, mecha, and technology, but again not enough of a unified technology system in my view. This reviewer feels that no SF game is complete without them. There are tools for creating your own setting, but not a complete setting itself. BASH! SF does have many familiar alien races (with the serial numbers filed off), a bunch of equipment that the reader would expect. The mechanics seem simple and fast, a nice little game. I hope to gods they change the cover art, and if they do, print a version for distribution. It is well worth the investment, and this reviewer hopes there is a planned complete setting book for the game, as well as the aforementioned more complete spacecraft construction and technology rules. The game is available for $15.00 from RPGnow, as are the companion supers and fantasy systems in the BASH! family. In my opinion the price is just slightly too high. Especially considering the value offered by our next game. As this column is finished I understand the price has been lowered, so check it out.
Thousand Suns
The book I got this month was from my friend Richard Iorio at Rogue Games. Thousand Suns is written by Richard and James Maliszewski, and looks to be pretty good. It is a system derived from or heavily influenced by D20, but is divergent from most of that lot. The system works. This reviewer does think it is too cumbersome in places, and not definitive enough elsewhere. This may get in the way of a great game. They do have a nice idea for support. The Encyclopedia Galactica is dedicated to catalog and support Thousand Suns.
This is not an admirably original SF setting like Blue Planet, or White Wolf’s aborted Exiles setting. This is an old school SF setting, with familiar tropes and genre conventions, and it should be. The designers refer to it as “Imperial SF”, a subclass of Space Opera similar to the works of Piper, et al. This excellent basic SF setting is designed to be customized and warped into our own games for our own groups. This work also clearly shows a love for the genre and an attention to detail that really makes the geek heart race.
I cannot stress enough how much I like both BASH! SF and Thousand Suns. Not just because they are good games, but because they do not attempt to shove the meta-story down our collective throats. These games are designed to be unique in execution within a collective framework.
Thousand Suns is available as a PDF for $9.99 and as a POD Digest size book for $24.99. Is it just this reviewer, or does a SF RPG just feel as if it needs to be a digest-sized book? Comparisons to Traveller notwithstanding, I think it is a great book and that Rogue could have a big hit. What they need now are two or three good supplements expanding the setting tools and campaign types presented in the core book. The first one needs to be a spacecraft construction supplement.
“…But I’m Just Playing My Character” and other lame arguments.
One final thought this month, listening to the Sons of Kryos podcast while scanning the RPG.net forums, and the Traveller Mailing List I discovered some synchronicity. They all happened to discuss on of the cardinal sins of roleplaying. The dog-tired adage of “I’m just playing my character”. Part of me was wondering why we were still having this discussion, and another part of me realized that not everyone thinks like this columnist. Maybe no one does, but on this point, many of us seem to agree. “I’m just playing my character” is something that is always said in defense. Usually in defense of something stupid, and usually this involves killing someone else’s fun. This was a fantastic point made by Jeff on Sons of Kryos. This is something that so many gamers just do not get. Killing another player’s fun by emptying your weapon into a valuable NPC, charging through a door without thought, or grabbing the princess’ ass is a sure-fire way to be disliked.
In my opinion, randomized character deaths or fragging by the other PCs is simply failure; not just failure on the part of a GM, but also a failure of the individual players and the group as a collective whole. Roleplaying is, at its heart a collaborative and shared experience. Without the cooperation and participation of the entire group, the enterprise is bound to fail.
If the group is antagonistic, cooperatively and stylistically, the game experience will suffer. If a player is antagonistic to the rest of the group it is the GMs responsibility to facilitate the discussion of why. If a player does something "stupid" then the other players clearly have not made their goals explicit. Killing a character as a punitive action is the worst offense a GM, another player, or a group can make. It means that no one is willing to take responsibility for his or her own failures or mistakes. Most importantly, this means someone is not having fun, which is the entire point of roleplaying in the first place.
See you next month.
