We know them, we love them; on occasion we mock them. We spend great swaths of time pounding away on our controllers trying to dodge 100 lightning bolts to gain the Ultimate Weapon. Then we turn around and spend great swaths of time watching friends and family pound away on their controllers doing the exact same thing. We debate – at great length – whether they live up to the name that they appropriated from tabletop gaming. Occasionally, we wonder what it might be like on the other side of the screen.
Console roleplaying games hold a special place in geekdom’s heart, which almost inevitably led to the creation of Super Console. This tabletop roleplaying game by Colin Fredericks is designed to emulate the experience of console roleplaying games, creating a house of mirrors where art imitates life imitating... well, Final Fantasy. The inevitable cross-format crash of pixels and dice could have been a sloppy hack-job of slavish aping and unrecognized assumptions. Luckily, though, Fredericks has invested a great deal of insightful analysis to the genre and implemented clever mechanics in his game to produce a play experience that emulates rather than imitates, and allows the players at the table to enjoy the house of mirrors rather than get lost within it.
In the interest of full disclosure, Fredericks and I have swapped reviews. His is of my game Full Light, Full Steam. Our goal was to give others an honest look at both games, and I have tried to be as objective as I can in this review. This is a review of the PDF version of the book.
Real Console Action
The designer’s abiding love for the genre is plain on every page of the book, both in the specific examples of play and in the underlying structure built into the game. No game of Super Console takes place anywhere near the real world; the world of Super Console is one which is defined by the game. History is the product of humanity’s struggle with Evil, which has been lurking in the background, plotting and planning in every Age. Towns exist to resupply the heroes and point them in the direction of the local fragment of plot and/or Boss monster that must be fought. Heroes do not travel the world, they move around on the World Map. And everything, absolutely everything in the world, has a level.
The extent to which your game plays up the genre conventions of console roleplaying games is entirely up to you. The game provides strong guidelines for four flavors of play: Silly, Console, Mixed, and Brutal. Silly games focus on the absurdity of save points, empty-headed townsfolk, and having the thief steal a monster’s pants in order to acquire a health potion. Console games – the default – accept the oddities of the genre and move on, concentrating on enjoying the emulation of the genre. Mixed games – the most interesting option to my mind – also accept the strangeness of the genre but attempt to examine their ramifications: if a save point brings people back from the dead, where do they go in the mean time, and what’s so important that they give up the afterlife to come back and fight monsters? Lastly, Brutal games are hardcore, tactical bruisefests using the combat system as a robust chassis for proving player skill and savvy. The four flavors are threaded throughout the book, one of many methods of customizing your game to your preferences.
The number of options in the game is enormous. The game allows for single-character or troupe play (so you can ‘pick your party’ for each session). Minigames and embedded games of skill are supported by optional dice-stacking or dart-throwing mechanics. Depending on which Age of History your game is set in, the attributes and class names change: Strength in low-tech settings is replaced with Accuracy in gun-toting worlds and medieval Mages become space-age Psions. Yet while the names and options change, the underlying mechanics always remain the same.
Clever Implementation
In fact, the mechanics under the hood are perhaps the strongest element of the entire game. Console roleplaying games are notorious for hit points in the thousands and dealing three hundred fifty six points of damage with each swing. Handling that level of number-crunching at the gaming table would mire any game in needless calculation, but abandoning that element would lose an important component of the feel of the video games. Fredericks neatly sidesteps the mountains of math without losing an iota of feel.
Each character has a health bar, mana bar, and experience bar. Bars go from zero to one hundred percent. Damage, healing, spell costs, potions, and gaining experience are all handled by gaining and losing percentages of the bars. Thus instead of subtracting 356 damage from your 1780 hit points, you knock 20% off of your health bar: simple as that! And since stats for PCs and monsters always include their level, effects from lower-level monsters and items always have less effect on higher-level PCs. The end result is surprisingly accurate without requiring fiddly math.
The mechanical backbone of the game is also geared to carefully orchestrated pacing. The main characters start at level one (or maybe with a couple starter levels) and are due to face the main villain around level 75. Characters will face monsters and boss battles along the way and quickly ascend levels, consistently acquiring new tactical options every session. Even after the main villain goes down, levels continue to 99 if the players really want to see what happens after they save the world. Play at this level is intentionally overpowered, with a designed mechanical breakpoint making all characters significantly more powerful than the world that they inhabit.
Characters are built in one of two ways: classed and tasked. Classed characters are straightforward, niche-protected, specialists with familiar names: dragoons, white mages, thieves, and dark knights. Classed characters provide a low barrier to play and quickly-grasped mechanics. You can literally create a classed character in ten minutes and start play immediately. For players who desire a little more complexity, tasked characters take the level abilities of the classes, atomize them, and lay them out in a network of character options. Players may replicate any class easily, or create their own unique tactical roles.
Lastly, no overview of the game’s mechanics would be complete without at least a mention of Patience. This very subtle metagame currency allows players to avoid aspects of play that they are disinterested in playing through. You know that level where you have to jump up to the platform, then take the elevator down two floors, jump into empty space and land in the water, then swim through the sewer grate, all to find the chest with the key to the door? If that’s not your cup of tea, you can spend a few points of Patience to represent burning a few hours with your controller trying to figure out where to go. At the table, play simply continues on through that locked door. Alternatively, you can spend Patience to thoroughly search your immediate location, grind through a couple levels, or earn a little extra spending cash. It’s sort of a fast-forward button for the game. Your character does what needs to be done and you don’t.
Well Put Together
The entire affair is wrapped up in engaging prose that celebrates the console roleplaying game in all its quirks and foibles. Rules are presented clearly, options are laid out invitingly, and it’s obvious that the author shares your love of the game. It’s a good thing, too, because with the book’s spare art, the writing carries the book. My personal favorite line comes from the section describing the thief ability to pants their enemies: “All monsters wear pants, and Boss monsters are not immune.” Really, with tactical options like that, what’s not to love?
Any lifelong console roleplaying gamer needs to take a look at this book, and at a ten dollar download price, there’s little reason why they can’t. The print item goes for $18, which is a steal. This is a well-constructed, carefully balanced game that shows the love that it’s been lavished with. We need to see more games of this caliber – both in terms of clever implementation and creative ambition.
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