The name's Davenport. I review games.So the other day there's this knock on my office door. I answer it, and in walks an Elvis impersonator, a caveman, a demon, a gunslinger, a masked Mexican wrestler, a mutant trucker, a Japanese superhero, a drag queen, a punk rock zombie, an annoying little alien critter, a psychotic clown, a…
Okay, you know what? Screw it. I'm not even gonna try explaining this one.
Just read the damn review.
Content
Author's Note
I have to hand it to Jared Sorenson, author of octaNe: premium uNleaded: right off the bat, he not only tells his readers just what the Hell kind of game this is – which is good, because "What the Hell...??" is a likely first reaction – but also explains precisely why he designed the game the way he did.
The world of octaNe – and don't even think about changing that capitalization – is, we're told, a post-apocalyptic America in which the West has become "a mythic Oz of rust and dust where just about anything could happen."
What kind of apocalypse was it? Who cares?
(Hopefully not you, since the game won't tell you.)
All you need to know – according to Jared, anyway – is that everything east of the Mississippi River is an endless stretch of empty roads leading nowhere, and that the West is drenched in the sleaziest, tackiest, trashiest, weirdest aspects of pop culture, sci-fi, and rock n' roll. It's a dusty, flame-painted, supercharged hot rod cobbled together by a literal grease monkey out of 30's pulp adventure, 50's atomic horror, 70's exploitation flicks, 80's trash sci-fi and gorefests, and God knows what else, with a sequined Elvis at the wheel munching on a dino-burger, squawking on the CB, and putting the pedal to the metal, baby. It's a whacked-out setting powered by an unabashedly unrealistic bare-bones system designed with cinematic storytelling in mind.
So, that's what the game sets out to be. Now let's see if it succeeds.
Introduction
So far, it sounds like a real "anything goes" game, doesn't it? But the problem with "anything goes" games is that certain things just don't mix well in the same setting, either clashing terribly or else creating something new and unintended. Mix wacky 50's sci-fi with gritty 80's post-apocalypse, for example, and one or the other is going to have to give.
octaNe takes this into consideration, offering four "theatrical modes" of play consisting of rules and thematic suggestions:
- Psychotronic (Retro-Cool Kitch): For all intents and purposes the "default" mode of octaNe, drawing its inspiration from such movies as Buckaroo Banzai, Repo Man, and Six-String Samurai. The mode rules reward PC wackiness and favors weirdness and heroics over gratuitous sex and violence. (Which is odd, since one of the quoted definitions of "psychotronic" in the section cites sex and violence as part of such films' appeal.) The PCs are not only true heroes, but heroes who won't ever die. Period.
- Grindhouse (Cheap Exploitation): Okay, here's where the gratuitous sex and violence shows up. There's still plenty of weirdness potential, given inspirations such as The Toxic Avenger and From Dusk Till Dawn – not to mention games like Unknown Armies and Macho Women with Guns – but now character death is not only possible, but probable, and players are rewarded for grossing out the GM and the other players. Oh, and the PCs may not be very nice people.
- Arthouse (Mythic Storytelling): The weirdness is still here, but it's more of an arty, surreal weirdness than the trashy variety of the previous two modes. The heroes are epic, the themes are sweeping, the setting is decidedly Western in feel if not in fact, strong emotions rule the day, and Everything Means Something. Think Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" Spaghetti Westerns or Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Players get rewards for cool visuals and clever dialogue.
- Cinéma Vérité (Gritty Hyper-realism): However "unrealistic" the setting, this mode goes for real human drama and an unforgiving reality – the original Mad Max being a prime example. Using this mode means that most of the zany stuff – i.e., much of what makes octaNe what it is – gets the boot. To the author's credit, he points out that those most interested in nitty-gritty post-apocalyptic detail may want to look elsewhere. (Few things bug me more than game designers who claim that their games can do "anything". Such claims are universally incorrect.)
Playtest: I decided to go with Psychotronic. I figured I might as well see what this thing can do at its most freewheeling. It also seemed easier to attract players with this mode, since in many ways it's the most unique.
Game Mechanix
The core mechanic of octaNe shares the same basic die roll as its fellow Mememto-Mori game InSpectres: a small pool of d6s, counting only the highest die, with the result determining not the success of an action, but rather the relative control the GM and the player have in describing the outcome.
The big difference here is that unlike the characters in InSpectres, PCs in octaNe don't have stats that make them better at this or that. The philosophy behind the system is that the vagaries of die rolls shouldn't turn an expert into a bungler or a rookie into a pro, and that what matters is not how well a PC does something so much as the style with which he does it.
Accordingly, PCs have scores not in attributes and skills, but rather in "Styles": Daring, Ingenuity, Craft, Charm, Might, and Magic. These scores do not directly affect die rolls. Instead, characters declare their actions based upon the Style being used, and in the order listed above. Under normal circumstances, the players roll 3d6 and take the highest, regardless of the Style in use.
That's right: under normal circumstances, all characters have the exact same chance of accomplishing anything.
A roll of 5 or 6 gives the players total control over the outcome, with progressively lower rolls shifting the power back towards the GM. Note that this does not mean that a low roll indicates failure and that a high roll indicates success – if the player gets total control and wants his character to fail, or if the GM gets total control and wants the same character to succeed, that's what happens.
In addition, when a roll comes up 5, the character gets a number of Plot Points equal to the Style used for the action, and if a roll comes up 6, the character gets that same amount plus one extra Plot Point. (Thus, characters can earn Plot Points even if their score in a Style is zero.) Plot Points, in turn, allow players to roll extra d6s on a 1-for-1 basis, rolling as many as they like so long as they can explain one way in which they are altering the current scene for each Plot Point spent.
It took me a while to wrap my head around this, but it finally made some sense. Basically, in octaNe, characters aren't more likely to use certain abilities because they're better at them; rather, they're more likely to use certain abilities because doing so makes them better at everything at a faster rate.
In other words, a character with a Daring of 0 is just as likely to succeed at an individual Daring action as is a character with a Daring of 3; it's just that on a roll of 5, the first PC will get no Plot Points and the second will get 3, while on a roll of 6, the first PC will get 1 Plot Point and the second will get 4. You might think of it as a form of bribery.
And it's this bribery that can dissuade players from declaring victory for their characters the first time they get total control: the longer the action keeps up, the more chances they'll have to get more Plot Points. Of course, this is a gamble, since there's always the chance that the GM will get control and leave the character in an unpleasant situation – especially if the opposition is particularly tough (see below).
Playtest: For example, the player of the Masked Luchadora (female Mexican wrestler) in my game got total control right off the bat in her character's wrestling match. She could have had her character win right then and there, but she chose instead to continue the match in order to pick up more Plot Points. The GM never needs to roll, by the way. Any form of typical complication uses the standard roll described above. Any particularly challenging complication, from a radioactive tornado to a mutant drag queen hooker, gets a Hazard Rating from 1-6, with each point canceling the highest die result in a roll. This, of course, means that Hazard Ratings of 3 or more make a given task impossible unless the hero spends Plot Points to overcome them.
So far, so good – we have a freewheeling setting with freewheeling rules, both of which allow for quick improvisation.
There's one problem, though: what do you do when multiple players have total control of outcomes with the same basic objective? The text suggests retroactively reconciling the actions to have the coolest possible outcome for all concerned, emphasizing that the order of action declaration doesn't stipulate the order in which actions actually take place. In other words, if one player wants his character to Craftily distract a foe while another wants his character to Daringly punch out that same foe, the GM can have the distraction happen before – and leave an opening for – the punch.
Unfortunately, that's easier said than done in some cases, especially when the outcomes the various players want directly conflict with one another. For example, what if multiple players get total control, and all of them want their characters to be the one to K.O. the bad guy? Sure, you can say that they all hit at the same time… but in so doing, none of the players are defining exactly what takes place.
Playtest: In my first trial session, for example, one character took a Crafty action – one that, in retrospect, I probably should have treated as Charm – in order to double-talk a chef angry at an insult to his cooking into directing his anger at his staff. This left a second player, who'd planned on using Charm to defuse the situation, without much to contribute. I could have incorporated his intended action, but the fact that the players knew that the situation had already been resolved made the additional detail of the Charm offensive seem superfluous, even though it could have happened before the Craftiness. I can see this sort of situation growing logarithmically more complex as more characters direct their actions at the same obstacle. I'm sure it's possible to retroactively weave seemingly conflicting outcomes into interesting results if the GM is fast enough on his creative feet, but for me, it slowed what should have been a fast-and-furious game.
The only solution that comes to mind would be having actions take place in order of declaration rather than however the GM wants them to fall. Granted, this would give characters using Styles higher in the declaration order more power over scenes, but it would, at least, clear up any confusion – players declaring later could make their characters' actions fit the current circumstances based upon previous rolls in the round. Besides, players declaring earlier already have disproportionate control over the scene – if they already get the exact result they want, they will always be able to effectively steal the thunder of players going after the same obstacle but declaring later in the round. Even if the Crafty trick happens before the Daring punch in game terms, the reality is that the players will know the fate of the bad guy as soon as the Daring action results in total control.
Playtest: On the other hand, during my more recent trial game session, the characters faced multiple opponents, giving all concerned more room to "go nuts". Once overlapping objectives no longer posed a major problem, the game ran like gangbusters – i.e., how I thought it should run in the first place. Characters have skills, but they're of the "have-it-or-don't" variety. If a character has a skill, he rolls normally. If he doesn't, he can only roll using dice bought with Plot Points, unless he instantly and retroactively buys a skill with a Plot Point – if the GM thinks it makes sense for the character to have the skill in question, that is.
Playtest: The thing is, given the nature of octaNe in anything other than Cinéma Vérité mode, I had a hard time imagining a circumstance in which I could argue that a given PC having a given skill "didn't make sense." I mean, most of the characters don't make much sense already. Who am I to say that a Classic Smartcar doesn't know how to sing show tunes, or that a Punk Rawk Zombie can't do macramé? As a result, I pretty much gave my players free reign when it came to adding skills, letting them police themselves as they saw fit. To do otherwise felt like defining the players' characters for them. Might & Magic
Now, here's where things get a little tricky. The aforementioned rules apply to Daring, Ingenuity, Craft, and Charm. Those Styles cover things that anyone can do. Might and Magic cover the "weird stuff."
The good news is that they allow the character to do the impossible. The bad news is that when they're used to actively affect the course of an adventure, they work as though the character is attempting an unskilled action – i.e., he doesn't get the standard three dice, but rather must spend Plot Points for any dice rolled.
Now, such rolls can ignore Hazard Ratings from mundane threats… but "mundane" is an awfully fuzzy term in a setting like this. And having to spend those Plot Points in the first place is like starting out with a Hazard Rating of 3. And when the threats aren't "mundane," characters using Might or Magic, quite frankly, get screwed. Why? Because not only do they have to spend Plot Points for every die, but they also have to overcome the Hazard Rating. In effect, this makes them weaker than allies using Daring, Ingenuity, Craft, or Charm against supernatural, ultra-tech, or otherwise freaky obstacles. This design also hampers the ability of Might to simulate superhuman levels of ability – super-strength, for example.
The rules do make one final attempt to make Might and Magic worthwhile: those using Mighty or Magical Styles can make full 3-dice rolls at no Plot Point cost in order to reduce the Hazard Rating of an obstacle, gaining no Plot Points in the process. (The text doesn't stipulate this, but in response to a question from me, the author clarified that the Hazard Rating can even be reduced to a negative number, thereby adding dice to rolls to overcome it.) Still, that means that Might or Magic can "soften up" an opponent, but if the same Styles are used to finish him off, they'll still be at a disadvantage compared to characters using the four mundane Styles.
Playtest: For example, the aforementioned Masked Luchadora possessed the Mighty power of superhuman strength. In a wrestling match with her arch-nemesis, she was able to use her super-strength to reduce her opponent's Hazard Rating, but it made no sense for her to use that power to finish off the foe – for that, she used the Dramatic Style. Granted, if she'd had more points in Might than in Daring, she'd have had the Plot Point incentive, but that would have meant spending Plot Points in order to get Plot Points. Basically, the Might/Magic mechanic works best when simulating a completely impossible ability – such as flying – rather than an impossible ability level. (In that respect, it puts me very much in mind of the Fringe Power rule in the equally weird and rules-light Over the Edge.) This makes me wonder why superhuman strength comes up repeatedly as an example of a Mighty ability in the book.
Character Creation
Like the rest of the system, character creation takes the streamlined route. And a big part of that streamlining stems from the use of pre-defined Roles – i.e., character templates.
Technically, I suppose this is a limitation; however, there are 45 Roles, they are universally cool, and even if a player can't find a Role he likes, there are rules for creating custom Roles.
Playtest: Custom Roles were the farthest things from my players' minds, given their list of choices. An actual quote from a player after reading through the Roles pretty much sums up the reactions of all of my players: "Man. Every time I… Man… I haven't even made my character yet, and my mind's already blown." In fact, the Roles seemed to sell potential players on the game more than anything else. Given that proven selling power of the Roles, I'll present the list of them here in its entirety. I think they speak for themselves…
Alien Naturalist Ape-Man Islander Bad-ass Mofo' Capuchin Monkey Classic Smartcar Crazed Aviator Crusty Sea Captain Death-Rock Siren Desert Chieftain Disco Robot Gigolo Drag Strip Queen Elvis impersonator Fast-Food Ninja 'Frisco Diver Greasemonkey Hard-Rock Caveman Helljack High-Plains Drifter Ingenious Tinkerer Japanese Superhero Killah Klown Masked Luchador Metallurgist Monster Smasher Mutant Trucker Old Sawbones Ostrich Wrangler Outlaw Biker Plucky Kid Punk Rawk Zombie Renegade Mobster Repo-Man Road Warrior Roller-girl Six-String Samurai Smartcar Rustler Speed Racer Straight-Laced G-Man Stuntman Heretic Swashbuckling Pirate Techno-Shaman Two-Fisted Padre Ultra Vixen Weird-but-Cute Pet Worm Surfer
See what I mean?
octaNe: the Setting
While octaNe makes a point of not worrying about details like maps, it does provide a general overview of the setting.
As previously mentioned, there's nothing east of the Mississippi. New Texaco's down south, a conglomeration of Texas, Mexico, and Oklahoma filled with oil refineries, hell-raising rednecks, and Mexican wrestling. Next door, giant 'gators and voodoo cults haunt the swamps of what was once Louisiana. Keep heading south, and you run into the dinosaur jungles that provide New Texaco's bar & grills with their famous 72-oz. dino-steaks, and an Aztec Empire ruled by mummies. Detriot's a rusting, robotic hell-hole. Las Vegas is still out west, until recently ruled by the late Elvis but now under the thumb of the Mob. Road warriors, radioactive mutants, and scattered communities of primitives lurk in the Wastelands that were once Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. L.A.'s still on the coast and still cranking out entertainment – and is now a big port of entry for extraterrestrial visitors – but a good chunk of San Francisco's fallen into the ocean. The Pacific Northwest is still lush and green… but filled with survivalists, Neo-Nazis, and assorted lunatics. Offshore in the Pacific, it's a Waterworld of derelict ships and debris forming islands for survivors, prey for pirates on gas-guzzling powerboats and jetskis. Hawaii's now Monster Island, home to Godzilla-style critters and the ape-men tribes who manage to stay out from underfoot. And waaaay on the other side of the Pacific, Japan's hording all the high-tech goodies in towering skyscrapers and massive arcologies.
Despite all the setting's gonzo wackiness, it's not a complete multi-genre free-for-all. For one thing, it's still ostensibly post-apocalyptic, so equipment isn’t always easy to come by. (Not that equipment matters all that much in this game.) And where tech does exist, it's generally of a late 70s-early 80s variety, with some anomalies like Knight Rider-inspired Smartcars, androids, and assorted weird science gadgets, not to mention all of Japan. And while there are aliens, PCs can never, ever hop in a spaceship and leave the planet. Why? For the moment, the author's best answer is "just because," although he promises a better explanation when one comes to him…
Oh, and cows are mostly extinct. So the setting's hard-riding "cow"boys herd ostriches.
Nevertheless, there should be something for just about everyone: ape-men, goth witch chicks, vampires, demons, aliens, dinosaurs, mutants, kaiju monsters, talking monkeys, Death him/herself, and more. Magic styles run the gamut from repo-men casting exorcisms on possessed vehicles to metallurgists invoking eldritch powers through heavy metal guitar rifts.
Style
This game is nothing if not innovative. Thankfully, the writing proves totally devoid of the kind of condescending tone many innovative RPGs seem prone to adopt. No, octaNe tells you precisely what it is, what it is not, why you might like it, and why you might not, never hinting that it represents the discovery of the One True Way of gaming. The author embraces both the unavoidable humor and the guilty-pleasure coolness of the subject matter, delivering an infectious enthusiasm that had me yearning to get a game going immediately. (And, in fact, got me to run another game while working on this review.)
Perfect examples of this enthusiasm are the Rule of Rock n' Roll, which makes a background soundtrack of rock music mandatory, and the Rule of Snacks, which states that everyone should bring munchies and/or drinks to the game – preferably of the sort befitting a "white trash picnic".
There's no art to speak of, and frankly, I couldn't care less. First off, it leaves more room for text. But second and more importantly, it simply isn't needed. Anyone with even passing familiarity with the delightful dregs of American pop and geek culture – i.e., anyone likely to play this game in the first place – will already have a pretty good idea of what 99% of the setting looks like. Do we really need pictures of an Elvis impersonator, or a dinosaur, or a Japanese superhero, or a sandworm? And as for the remaining 1%, I'd rather have that left to the imagination anyway.
(One notable exception to the lack of artwork is the rather ass-kicking character sheet using a beautifully-rendered dashboard motif.)
And perhaps due in part to the lack of artwork, the layout makes for an uncluttered, easy read. I particularly like the "atomic 50's" style of the page borders.
There's no index, which always annoys me, but there is, at least, a handy "cheat sheet" for the mechanics. The guide to the setting's "slanguage" is another a big plus.
Conclusion
As with InSpectres, this game may not suit those looking for a "traditional" roleplaying game, given its proximity to being more of a storytelling game. That said, I found that it somehow felt more like a traditional RPG than did InSpectres – perhaps because there's less emphasis on players seeing their PCs from a 3rd-person perspective and controlling the direction of the entire adventure rather than individual outcomes. Not that there's anything wrong with "non-traditional" RPGs, mind you – I just think it's important for players to know what sort of game they'll be playing to avoid disappointment. To whit: the only player who expressed real disappointment in the game was one who went in thinking that it was a different RPG of the more familiar sort. The other reactions ranged from neutral to "I have got to get this!", with a solid majority falling into the latter camp.
In any event, when octaNe works, it works great. When it doesn't work so well – as in cases in which multiple players have "total control" over the same basic outcome – it demands a great deal of creativity on the part of the GM to keep it in gear. I suspect that given the looseness of the rules, this issue may not prove much of a problem to GMs willing to work with the system in the first place.
I definitely have nothing bad to say about the setting, however – not unless you mean "bad" as in "Bad-ass Mofo'". It combines the flexibility to incorporate almost anything the GM can imagine with a unifying theme that keeps the game from seeming like a bland multi-genre catch-all.
In the end, I'd have to say that the game will be loads of fun for most gamers in the right mood, and an exercise in torture for those who aren't. Fortunately, I'm almost always in the mood for a game this flat-out insane.
The Reviewer has left the building. Thankyouverramuch.
SUBSTANCE:
- Setting
- Quality = 5.0
- Quantity = 4.0
- Rules
- Quality = 4.0
- Quantity = 4.5
STYLE:
- Artwork = n/a
- Layout/Readability = 4.0
- Organization = 4.0
- Writing = 5.0
- Proofreading Penalty = 0.0
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