This game smacks of the old school , with multitude of dice to be used for different random needs.
The game Frontier Horizons is a little weak in its lay our but its just a rough draft, used for play testing only. So I cant give a fair scoring on this current lay out. The game is very well designed in its character creation -
Character creation is rolled up with dice. When it come to background this is a very rolled out procedure , but I found it fun and like the out come every time I created a character. The background rolls are very much like life paths from Cyber-punk. Choosing a career was easy and quick. The way some other commercial game should have handled it. The Arthur and I chatted for a while and he gave a very professional goal for his game. The Arthur " Rick Heney take feed back real well and enjoyed the information my group and a few other I asked to check this game out, had to give. The range Combat system is a bet drawn out the first few time , butafter you learned the game it made sense. The hand to hand system is very good. It was quick and allowed a player to execute counter attacks when another character failed to execute their move. Out of the three groups that played it I found no one who disliked the game, and in true games fashion all the groups had their own house rule already. Also each group had made plans to play past the play test times slotted for them. Over all I enjoyed it very much and found that if this game cleans up the lay out and add some art for feel , that some day you might just see this one on a shelf in you local gaming shop! I recommend this system to all old Travellers and Alternity fans. I find this system has a lot of possibilities and is just that a system. There is little or know background world information. This is such as the old games that just gave you a system too play and left the creation part to the Referee. This in my opinion is a bonus to the game.
This is a good free rpg out their and I suggest you check it out before it goes commercial.
Group A " Retro- gamer group"
One male in his forties " Jim"
One female late twenties " Vicky "
One female early thirties " Anne"
One male early thirties " Kit"
Note like the game , very realistic in Fire arm combat- type of game played early 21st century cyberpunk
We all ran street solos and Fixers one Assassin.
The game ended quicker than we thought it would , once combat insured no one was left standing.
Next game we where all real cautious of combat and we all lived longer.
Time played 6hr
Character creation for three players one hour
Easy of system - easy and quick to pick up on.
Advance rules system - need to be experienced to follow the rules.
Second game time played 8hr
Character creation hour and half- all had cybernetics
Need some room for more mental or spiritual back ground , no place for the mystical.
Know a little extra I sent the Arthur an interview to read and fell out so you can check it out below.
The Interview:
> what i have to ask is why in a market so full of somany sci=fi type of games
> , did you feel your game could make a deffrence?
Most games these days all seem to have a gimick. Some games boast of only using a particular type of die. Some games boast of having a whole universe laid out for the characters to adventure in.
Rick
My game is a step away from this new trend. It's less about having a gimick
to sell itself, and all about selling itself on its inherent merits. I use a
variety
of dice. Big deal. I think that's the way games should be. Dice are our
tools;
we should use them.
At the heart of every role playing game (originally, anyway) was the concept
of "take what you like, leave what you don't." Games these days seem to have
gotten away from this. Now, everything is pre-fab. You buy a game and it
comes with the universe ready made, everything all cardboard cutout. Everything
fits neatly in its place.
I don't try and cram my idea of a game universe down the GM or player's
throte. The system is just that: a system. Sure, there is background
information,
but its all the small stuff. Source material exists in the form of planets.
Each
planet has a different feel. The planets and thier systems can be fit into the
"universe" or used as a template for the "universe." If a group wants to run a
low tech western game, so be it.
Background will be available, but it will be slanted more towards a "how things
work" than from a "who runs things" point of view.
> What is thier about your game that is deffrent about say Traveler and fading
> sun?
This game is everything I always wanted but could never find in other
role-playing
games. Most games these days always have some sort of theme to them, such
as Fading Suns, or post-hollocost, etc. My game is open. It's designed from a
bright future (versus dark future which seems to be so popular of late).
Although,
dark future settings can easily be run with my system.
> >
> how is your game better than say ga D20 or Fuzian? if no
> why no what makes your game mechanics so diffrent- to a first time reader
> who was reading this mail , what can you say that would make them come check
> out your system?
One of the original ideas for the game was that I wanted to make the characters
feel like actual people. I've played a lot of games where a character was just
a few numbers (or even a lot of numbers) on a page, but there wasn't much more
to it. Part of the reason character creation is such a long process is to
encourage
players to think about their character as they make it. I've also tried to
provide
a *lot* of supplemental information during character generation that will help
describe who that character might be. To this day, every character my players
have created in this system has come to life with very interesting backgrounds
and personalities. I don't see that in other games. All I ever see is "Wow,
how'd
you get a 9 to-hit?" In my game, the first thing I usually hear players
mention
about their characters is their history ("my character is an xyz and grew up on
an aquatic pirateship after both parents were imprisoned for political
reasons").
Frontier Horizons is a wide open game. You can do a lot and there are many
choices for players. I've tried to keep everything in the game as original as
possible. You won't find any human's with funny heads as aliens, or humans
with magical powers, i.e., elves.
What makes the game mechanics different is my willingness to use a variety of
dice. "Traditional Gaming" seems to be the moniker people are throwing around.
There are some innovative facets to the game, that I've never seen in any other
game system. For example, the martial arts system allows for character's to
counter attack failed enemy attacks, as well as deliver combination attacks.
Something which is quite normal for a real martial artist. The counter and
combination attacks available to each character depend on the type of martial
art style the character knows.
There is also a vast capability for character customization. If a particular
player
wants to play a character that's a gun-nut, he can. There are plenty of options
and modifications available for weapons that he can do that (every knows how
these guys can go on about the newest clip for a particular weapon, or a scope
that's on the market, etc.) If a player want's a cybernetic character, there
are many options. You can even have cybernetic or genetically enhanced aliens.
I've never seen that in any other game.
> On a scale of one to five
> Scetch rpg being 0ne --READ AND PLAY
> 3e DnD being Three--PLAY FIRST AND THEN gM
> Rolemaster being a Five-- AFTER YEARS OF STUDY CAN GIVE YOUR FIRST GAME.
> how would you rate your systems complexity?
If D&D is a 3, I'd have to say my game is somewhere around a 3.5 - 4. There
are facets of the game that can seem complex, but all it takes is a patient mind
and everything falls into place. I have tried to limit the really time
consuming stuff
(such as character generation) to events that happen least frequently. And for
the stuff that can slow a game down, I have tried to provide some "quick rules"
which allow play to continue without bothering with some details. Then, as
players
and GM become more comfortable with the system, they can discard the "quick
rules" and use the more indepth stuff.
> What is the basic story - what kinda adventures can a player find in your
> game that just cant be duplicated in another game world?
Anything you can image. I've had adventures take place in super high tech
societies, where everyone ran around with very power weapons, and combat
wasn't about fire power, it was about power management and intelligence. I've
also had games where the adventures took place a few generations after the
post industrial period of a given planet. The only weapons available were
projectiles
and (if you had excellent underground connections) laser weapons. The
characters did more adventuring than combat. They did a subterranean "dungeon
crawl" which half the characters didn't even take weapons for! That was
probably
the best adventure as the characters encountered and had to deal with the myriad
of dangers and beasties running amok in the caverns. I've run straight combat
adventures "go shoot person X, bring back item Y, get paid Z money." The game
allows for a wide variety of environments and adventure possiblities. GM's
should
not feel forced to play a particular setting or game style.
> thanks for answering my questians
No problem! I'm looking forward to reading your review.
Thank you for having an interest in Frontier Horizons and taking the time to review it.
Sincerely,
Rick.
