Introduction
From a conversation I had with the J. Keith Wykowski, writer and publisher of Alpha Chronicles is a labor of love a set of home built rules that evolved over a long period to a point where they were published. This is an interesting story in and of itself and I would prefer to cover it in an RPG.net article… or better yet encourage J. Keith to do it.
Alpha Chronicles is available in PDF and a hardcopy formats. But what I really like is a starter set of rules for free on their webpage (www.alphachronicles.com) that runs 164 pages. I like this try before you buy philosophy as the core rule book weighs in at 384 pages there is plenty left to buy.
My experience in the games industry is from the small press side in the mid 1990’s, so a game like Alpha Chronicles is in my reviewing sweet spot. There is a balancing act between admiration for an author publishing something that comes from their heart and criticism when authors do a vanity project that should never have seen the light of day. I have been saddled with both while doing reviews for RPG.net all these years.
So how does Alpha Chronicles tip? Read on.
Character Building
Alpha Chronicles is a points based game for character building. A base set of points is allotted depending on the power level set by the GM. From my read through 300 to 500 points seems what the designers had in mind. These points can be used almost any time during the character development process. On top of these overall points, there are additional pools of option points to be spend in specific areas like attributes or resources. There are a lot of options and I recommend having a good idea of what you want your PC in Alpha Chronicles to be before you start spending any points.
Character classes are very straight forward: cybernetic/robotic, magical, psychic, skill based, comic book hero and unnatural. Mostly the delineation for these classes comes from cost and availability of options and powers. More on that later.
There is no alignment in Alpha Chronicles, rather it is a list of descriptors. A character will have a primary trait (say trickster) and any subsequent ones will play off of that (say rogue and liberal). Each is given a detailed write up, but for the most part this is padding as they are self describing.
Attributes are broken in to the following: agility, awareness, beauty, charisma, dexterity, health, intellect, luck, strength, willpower. For base statistics there are three methodologies, random, semi random and point based. 90 points is the max for a particular statistic and random 9d10 is used for each. Semi Random is 9d10 plus 400 points for attributes. Point based uses 450 points. The exception is beauty is always a random statistic, which seems like an odd choice given Alpha Chronicles is very much geared towards point based character building. One this I do like is attributes are bought with a separate pool of points, so there is not the temptation to under develop stats for abilities and likewise dump abilities for attributes.
Races are a straight forward section and the rules as presented have a heavy tilt towards a modern to near future setting and this is mostly reflected in this section. Which may have been a bit of a mistake, I think the absence of fantasy races would have been a good use of page space. Each race has a point cost associated with it. A common human is 0 points but an angel is 250. Race with a higher point cost gain powers that set them apart. Additional points may be spent on upgrades for some classes, which is a nice touch to differentiate races. For the most part each race gets +10 to every attribute… which kind of takes up space to relay the same information for each class. It would have been good to see variation as I have a hard time believing a werewolf’s strength bonus is the same as a common human.
Options and powers is a truly impressive section of Alpha Chronicles’ character building. Reviewing this section before deciding upon a character class would be highly recommended as each class has different power costs and availability. For example teleportation costs a psychic 100 points, an unnatural 125 points and is not available to a magic character. Within each option are upgrades and downgrades which is a great concept from a character design viewpoint but also a means to differentiate characters who might on the surface be similar. Options and powers are a mixed lot so far as what they do. But the write ups for each are detailed very well. With the sheer volume of abilities, a player will have to subvert that kid in a candy store approach because there are a mountain of skills and other things to purchase.
Weaknesses and flaws is a straight forward section in Alpha Chronicles; the bigger the impact of the flaw the more points a character gets back. This is gauged by the campaigns power level as to the max amount of flaws a character may have. This information is also way back in the beginning of the book and not adding this chart to this section is a curious choice given the heft y padding found elsewhere in Alpha Chronicles. This complaint aside weaknesses and flaws is well written and the consequences of them is thoughtfully written.
Purchasing resources is another large section of character development in Alpha Chronicles and there are some issues here. First is there is a good deal of duplication and I think many of these resources could have been boiled down, combined or made into an ability. All characters start with 10 points to spend, each resource has a max value of 10. Additional resource points may be bought with a character’s option points from the beginning of character creation.
Next up are skills. A player buys a base education for a select group of skills. For example self taught costs nothing but offer few skills, college costs 100 points but offers more skills at a higher value. Additional education points may be bought with option points. The number of skills is voluminous to the point of being bloated. Alpha Chronicles suffers from a bloat here as it is everything and the kitchen sink for skills, which can in turn be specialized. As seen with other games whose skill lists become unwieldy (think RoleMaster) Alpha Chronicles should have taken the red editing pen and mercilessly attacked this section of the game. Some skills really feel like powers, some skills feel redundant, some feel too specialize, some too generic.
Skills are modified by an attribute, but this is not a direct relation to the attribute, rather a secondary table lists the numerical value an attribute has to a skill. This would have been good information not have in the attributes section, but I suspect a simple mathematical formula would have adequate. So far as descriptive text goes, the write ups for skills are detailed and well done. There are simply too many of them.
Equipment is a standard list of stuff. There is nothing noteworthy one way or another, but equipment for various eras are offered which is helpful for a game outside modern to near future settings.
Finally in character building are calculated attributes and such. All of this is straight forward and covers areas like sanity points, encumbrance, magic regeneration, etc.
How character’s advance in Alpha Chronicles is pretty cool and far less granular than the system to build the characters. Experience points are doled out based on individual sessions and story arcs. The qualifiers are less on specific actions but more on style of play and overall accomplishment. Experience points benefit a character in two ways, first get enough and your character goes up a level and receives bonuses for their character. However experience points are also used to buy up skills, powers, etc. It should be noted after character creation improvements will be granular and glacial. So you had best be very happy with what your character can do because major upgrades are not a realistic expectation.
Game Mechanics, Game Play, Setting
Rather than dive into the minutiae of game mechanics in Alpha Chronicles I will discuss few generalities in regards to skills , combat and mechanics, then I will get into some specific areas I want to cover that (for better or worse) differentiate Alpha Chronicles.
Generally speaking skills are d100 roll with modifiers. I like this mechanic and it matches with the granular nature of character building. One thing that seriously bothered me was how poorly skill failures are handled. Even after multiple read throughs the impression I get is any failure is a critical failure based on the rules as written on the page. I intuitively know this is wrong and my assumption is it is a mirror of critical successes.
Magic is an area of Alpha Chronicles I found to be very impressive on the spell casting level. What a mage can do is limited by their skill level in that particular area of magic. To cast a spell effect the mage has to buy an effect like it was a skill. As a mage advances their repertoire expands in a manner that feels very organic. I would have liked to see an easier way to combine spell effects for more complicated spells, while it can be done the rules for applying magic are somewhat Byzantine. A more unified set of rules and values rather than a slew of one offs and arbitrary-feeling exception rules would have been the only improvement I would like to have seen.
All of this is probably fine for someone very accustomed to Alpha Chronicles, but as someone on the outside looking in and trying to decipher the rules, I found them to be unwieldy. The magic system reminded me of the RPG Darkurthe Legends (which I worked on) in that it is ala carte, but where Darkurthe had a much more accessible set of mechanics. Alpha Chronicles does a much better job of delineating what a mage can and cannot do via forcing mages to buy skills in various types of magic. I honestly like this system much better as it keeps mages from becoming over powered.
Combat is probably more complicated than it needs to be and a similar story to magic. There are many great ideas, but cohesive rules really keep it from being anything other than serviceable. An area I did like very much was martial arts. Like magic skill level acts as a threshold for what a combatant can do, specific martial arts moves can be bought at character creation and as the PC advances. This might be one of the better applications of martial arts in an RPG I have read.
Another part of Alpha Chronicles’ combat rules I like is how combat is played out. Every round is split into three phases, the more actions a player has the more of these phases they can perform an action, or take multiple phases to perform a complicated action. Some PC’s might only get one action they can take at any time, others might get than plus one in another phase or at any time.
An interesting mechanic in Alpha Chronicles relates to luck and storytelling. After a scene is set, the players can try to alter the scene via dice rolls (like there is a car in a dark part of a parking lot they can jump in to escape a poorly planned attack on a rival). I think this adds a nice element of storytelling and game mechanics and gets the players involved in a scene.
Alpha Chronicles is a generic RPG, but the book is definitely weighted towards a modern to future setting. I would have liked to have seen at least a barebones fantasy framework in the book included or replacing the modern setting entirely. Particularly in regards to races even if it were just a handful like elves, humans, dwarves and a handful of others it would have really flesh out character options. I say this because I think as a modern RPG, some of the rules simply become unwieldy as magic and combat are jam packed with inconsistent rules and mechanics that I have difficulty trying to figure out how and why certain rules decisions were made.
Some of this may stem from Alpha Chronicles trying to be different. Some of it might be because Alpha Chronicles evolved from a house game to a published game. Editing and boiling down rules is an art form but I think this game would have benefitted from a lot of fat being trimmed from a tasty morsel of meat. Another aspect of editing is I think there are parts of Alpha Chronicles that suffer from amateurish writing, usually this is when an opinion on gaming or the like is being discussed. I would offer the constructive criticism to apply some red ink and make it sound more professional. Outside of that the writing quality is very good and detailed even when I disagree with some of the decisions in regards to game mechanics.
Layout, Design, Production
The production values of Alpha Chronicles are a bit mixed. I did not find any glaring typos or layout issues in the text of Alpha Chronicles. I thought it was on par with games from more established publishers. There are some minor organizational issues, but nothing serious beyond the above skill failure issue.
Layout and design are a standard two column format wrapped in a perfect bound book. The front cover has minimal art, which is okay given the economics of self publishing. The physical format of Alpha Chronicles is slightly different in than the usual RPG book. It is somewhere between a trade paperback and a regular sized book. It is a format that I think worked out very well, compact but not too compact.
The art in Alpha Chronicles is (and I am being extremely charitable here) not good. I don’t particularly ascribe to art being all that important to an RPG, but there is a fine line between adequate art and art that looks mostly like it came from a high school art contest… and not the winners of that contest. It genuinely hurts the curb side appeal of the game. Luckily I had to read Alpha Chronicles cover to cover so this did not give me pause. Had I been casually reading this game at my local game shop, I might have been put off.
Final Thoughts
The end result of Alpha Chronicles is that it offers a detailed character building process that I think gives ample framework for almost any character concept. I like that there are pools of points to spend on various aspect of a character, but a pool of points to apply to these specific areas in a nice addition. I would have liked to have seen more statistical differentiation between races, each having basically the same attribute bonuses was a puzzling decision.
While the game mechanics of Alpha Chronicles are serviceable, there are areas I found to be inconsistent and/or redundant. Alpha Chronicles would have been better served by boiling down options or combining areas that are muddled or duplicated. I think there is always an urge to throw in the kitchen sink in a universal game, but sometimes less is more. The good news is there are some very good mechanics going on in Alpha Chronicles. The core spell casting mechanics and skills for magic are an impressive bit of game design. Martial arts are also top notch and very interesting. A bit of pruning may have to be done by a GM, but there is a lot to like.
I think making Alpha Chronicles a modern to near future RPG might have been the cause of a rules set that seems to spiral at times. I believe adding a focus on fantasy would have better leveraged the magic system which was one of the stars of the game rules. As well it would open up many more options for genres. I have never been very satisfied with points based characters in fantasy RPG’s, Alpha Chronicles would fill that void had there been more fantasy options. I think Alpha Chronicles would have been better served by splitting fantasy and modern into two separate and yet compatible games. I hope the forthcoming Alpha Arkana will resolve some of these issues.
Ultimately did I like Alpha Chronicles? Yes. While it has some rough edges, there is nothing that cannot be smoothed over or accepted. It is a game worth checking out if you want something different. There are more than a few great ideas thrown into Alpha Chronicles that elevates it above many other offerings.
Review Summary