The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I bought this on the strength of the co-author, Steve Miller, who isn't mentioned on the cover. I loved Dragonlance 5th Age, so I was looking forward to this one. I was rather disappointed.

A point-by-point review of every problem I had with the game was posted on rec.games.frp.misc, but Archangel head honcho Ken Whitman complained that Extreme Vengeance was just a silly little game and didn't merit a 1000+ word bad review. He may be right--that's longer than the useful portions of the book.

The concept behind Extreme Vengeance is that players take the role of actors who portray certain types of characters in action movies. The game, in theory, allows the gamemaster to move the characters into any type of action movie, from gunplay, to fantasy, to science fiction. This type of game has been done before, and done better, by Event Horizon Productions with "Hong Kong Action Theater!" and by Stellar Games, years ago, with "It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show".

The writing style is awful, trying to sound hip and humorous and not succeeding. Bad grammar, sentence fragments, and the wrong word in the wrong place (one sentence states that guns cause "causality", another speaks of firing a gun at "a dynamite") are all common. Much of the book's text is wasted on the authors' attempts at humor. Jokes are made about nearly every movie star they could think of, including some who aren't, strictly speaking, action movie stars. Attempts are made to ooze attitude, but they fall flat. It may just be my opinion, but a game written with normal prose but creative subject matter is better than the reverse.

Character creation consists of taking a Descriptor (Suave, Bumbling, Acrobatic, etc) and a Designator (Soldier, Cop, Common Champ, etc) and combining them. A neat idea, but other aspects of the character creation rules hurt the initial concept. There are only two characteristics: Guts and Coincidence. Coincidence is your ability to rely on luck to get you out of a tight situation. Guts is your ability to do everything else. Everything. Need to drive a car? Shoot a gun? Seduce someone? Dive out of the way of gunfire? It's all based on one stat. Since these stats are determined by your Descriptor/Designator combination, it means something strange: some character types just aren't as competent as others. Cops have more Guts than Outlaws. Pumped-Up characters have more Guts than Suave ones. But you'd have a hard time convincing me that Arnold's Kindergarten Cop (Guts 7) could take out Chow Yun Fat's Killer (Guts 4). Characters also get Repertoires and No-Goods (Adva! ntages and Disadvantages) based on their character concept. Some of these are very good (bumbling characters can mimic other repertoires by parodying them), others are just game mechanics (bonuses to perform certain actions).

The rules are simple. You roll your Guts, and depending on who your target is or how tense the situation is, you get a bonus or penalty based on how well the GM likes your description of what you do. In tense situations or against the toughest characters, only the most jaw-dropping stunts will let you get away without penalties. Some repertoires let you use less spectacular descriptions and not get penalized. For instance, there are 4 levels of excitement for any stunt. If your Acrobatic character executes a lame stunt ("I jump out of the way.") in a tense situation, he'd normally be penalized two dice. But because he has a background specialty in acrobatics, two levels of it, the stunt gets boosted so that he's not penalized. How good an idea this is is questionable. Sure, it's a good way to give a person a bonus to a certain type of activity, given that there aren't enough statistics to actually differentiate characters. On the other hand, roleplaying is a verbal me! dium. Cinematic roleplaying is exceptionally dependent on good description of activity. Giving a bonus to compensate for lackluster description seems counterproductive.

Character advancement is based on Popularity. Everything a character does can win fans, so every roll is added to figure out what a character's Popularity is. When you accumulate enough fans, you get more repertoires or stat bonuses. Of course, since some characters are more competent than others, they'll advance faster in addition to starting out better off. And recording the results of every die roll seems tedious to me. The rules give advice to starting players that they should try to prolong fights with "extras" so that they can gain more Popularity. Prolonged fights mean more rolls. More rolls means more Popularity. Most games these days try to reduce the amount of dice-rolling. Extreme Vengeance not only encourages lots of dice-rolling, it benefits players who can figure out how to roll more and more dice.

The interior artwork is bad. The artist shows little knowledge of human anatomy. There's really not much more to say. The margins reproduce a slice of the cover art, and are rather wide (about 2.5").

Overall, the entire game could have been cut down to about 10 pages, shrunk to a digest size, and sold in a ziplock baggie, like TWERPS, for a couple of dollars. Instead, it's 78 pages, mostly fluff, and $10. My advice to anyone interested in playing actors playing characters in an action movie is to spend an extra $10 and buy Hong Kong Action Theater!. My review of HKAT! is also on this site.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Extreme Vengeance
Author: Tony Lee Category: game Company/Publisher: Archangel Entertainment Reviewed by Kevin Mowery on 05/23/97. Genre tags: none	I bought this on the strength of the co-author, Steve Miller, who isn't mentioned on the cover. I loved Dragonlance 5th Age, so I was looking forward to this one. I was rather disappointed. A point-by-point review of every problem I had with the game was posted on rec.games.frp.misc, but Archangel head honcho Ken Whitman complained that Extreme Vengeance was just a silly little game and didn't merit a 1000+ word bad review. He may be right--that's longer than the useful portions of the book. The concept behind Extreme Vengeance is that players take the role of actors who portray certain types of characters in action movies. The game, in theory, allows the gamemaster to move the characters into any type of action movie, from gunplay, to fantasy, to science fiction. This type of game has been done before, and done better, by Event Horizon Productions with "Hong Kong Action Theater!" and by Stellar Games, years ago, with "It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show". The writing style is awful, trying to sound hip and humorous and not succeeding. Bad grammar, sentence fragments, and the wrong word in the wrong place (one sentence states that guns cause "causality", another speaks of firing a gun at "a dynamite") are all common. Much of the book's text is wasted on the authors' attempts at humor. Jokes are made about nearly every movie star they could think of, including some who aren't, strictly speaking, action movie stars. Attempts are made to ooze attitude, but they fall flat. It may just be my opinion, but a game written with normal prose but creative subject matter is better than the reverse. Character creation consists of taking a Descriptor (Suave, Bumbling, Acrobatic, etc) and a Designator (Soldier, Cop, Common Champ, etc) and combining them. A neat idea, but other aspects of the character creation rules hurt the initial concept. There are only two characteristics: Guts and Coincidence. Coincidence is your ability to rely on luck to get you out of a tight situation. Guts is your ability to do everything else. Everything. Need to drive a car? Shoot a gun? Seduce someone? Dive out of the way of gunfire? It's all based on one stat. Since these stats are determined by your Descriptor/Designator combination, it means something strange: some character types just aren't as competent as others. Cops have more Guts than Outlaws. Pumped-Up characters have more Guts than Suave ones. But you'd have a hard time convincing me that Arnold's Kindergarten Cop (Guts 7) could take out Chow Yun Fat's Killer (Guts 4). Characters also get Repertoires and No-Goods (Adva! ntages and Disadvantages) based on their character concept. Some of these are very good (bumbling characters can mimic other repertoires by parodying them), others are just game mechanics (bonuses to perform certain actions). The rules are simple. You roll your Guts, and depending on who your target is or how tense the situation is, you get a bonus or penalty based on how well the GM likes your description of what you do. In tense situations or against the toughest characters, only the most jaw-dropping stunts will let you get away without penalties. Some repertoires let you use less spectacular descriptions and not get penalized. For instance, there are 4 levels of excitement for any stunt. If your Acrobatic character executes a lame stunt ("I jump out of the way.") in a tense situation, he'd normally be penalized two dice. But because he has a background specialty in acrobatics, two levels of it, the stunt gets boosted so that he's not penalized. How good an idea this is is questionable. Sure, it's a good way to give a person a bonus to a certain type of activity, given that there aren't enough statistics to actually differentiate characters. On the other hand, roleplaying is a verbal me! dium. Cinematic roleplaying is exceptionally dependent on good description of activity. Giving a bonus to compensate for lackluster description seems counterproductive. Character advancement is based on Popularity. Everything a character does can win fans, so every roll is added to figure out what a character's Popularity is. When you accumulate enough fans, you get more repertoires or stat bonuses. Of course, since some characters are more competent than others, they'll advance faster in addition to starting out better off. And recording the results of every die roll seems tedious to me. The rules give advice to starting players that they should try to prolong fights with "extras" so that they can gain more Popularity. Prolonged fights mean more rolls. More rolls means more Popularity. Most games these days try to reduce the amount of dice-rolling. Extreme Vengeance not only encourages lots of dice-rolling, it benefits players who can figure out how to roll more and more dice. The interior artwork is bad. The artist shows little knowledge of human anatomy. There's really not much more to say. The margins reproduce a slice of the cover art, and are rather wide (about 2.5"). Overall, the entire game could have been cut down to about 10 pages, shrunk to a digest size, and sold in a ziplock baggie, like TWERPS, for a couple of dollars. Instead, it's 78 pages, mostly fluff, and $10. My advice to anyone interested in playing actors playing characters in an action movie is to spend an extra $10 and buy Hong Kong Action Theater!. My review of HKAT! is also on this site. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 2 (Sparse)