Red Eye follows three intertwined long term plots: The denizens of Leng have found themselves a patsy to research a spell necessary to their schemes, who has no intention of being a pawn for his masters, themselves unwittingly manipulated by the servitors of Azathoth. The PCs take the roll of souls forced into endless reincarnation as a byproduct of these schemes and try to put a stop to them before time runs out. A truly epic five-adventure campaign arc, Red Eye takes players through five different incarnations: medieval England, feudal Japan, the Spanish Inquisition, the American colonies, and the wild west. Each adventure works for a stand alone or one-shot. They could theoretically be run in any order, though chronological order is suggested and makes the most sense, since each scenario includes flashbacks to earlier ones that a keeper would have to wing without running them first. Though this multi-era setup has been done before, it’s far from common and this novelty along with Red Eye’s superb execution make it well worth a look.

Eye has plenty of content for the price ($9.99), and the production values are excellent with appealing era-appropriate artwork for each scenario and a clear, mood enhancing layout. However, despite the clear quality, there were also a few small problems with layout and editing that I found frustrating. A good deal of the scenarios revolve around the PCs having flashbacks of their previous incarnations. When one was mentioned in the text it was referred to only by name and number. The actual descriptions of the flashbacks were in appendices at the end of each scenario. While it was a minor annoyance to flip to the appendix and back or print out and keep handy the vision list, I would have preferred them in a boxed sidebar as necessary as well as in appendices. Aside from that, problems were minor. Some maps required a re-read of text to become clear, and there were a handful of typos, half of which could have been caught with a simple automated spellcheck (so I hope what I got was an advance copy). These issues weren’t crippling however. The overall quality was still very good.

The scenarios are well thought out and offer plenty of options for investigation and different play styles. As a product, it’s as much of an enjoyable read as it is a game. Included is the new Incarnum mechanic, which adds an interesting new layer to play by allowing PCs to “remember” skills from past incarnations as well as new monsters, new spells, and new items that can be shamelessly filched for your regular game, such as zombies stitched together into macabre spider monsters, a spell that allows beings to steal another’s visage, and a pistol that’s magic while you chant.

Of particular note are the pregenerated PCs provided for the scenarios. Meaty, with plenty of hooks and potential interactions, I wish there were several more provided with each section, as creating additional PCs with as much potential and weaving them into the scenario as well as the existing ones are is a daunting task, and with only four per scenario, it’s likely a fair number of groups will need more. Most of the pregenereated PCs have hooks for interactions, intra-party conflicts and side goals. Unfortunately, relatively few of these are specifically called out in the scenario as written, leaving interweaving them into the story up to the keeper and players.

Red Eye of Azathoth is a well executed beautiful work with plenty of material to steal for your regular game and a rarely attempted but expertly handled setup. If you’re a regular CoC keeper, this is a product you’ll want to get your hands on. By basic math alone, this is a collection of five professional quality linked one-shot scenarios at $2 each. How can you afford NOT to buy a copy?

Overview
Microscope is an independent RPG put out by Lame Mage Productions. Microscope has a tagline of “a fractal role-playing game of epic histories” and what this boils down to is that it is a collaborative history building game. The goal of any game of Microscope is to sit down with your friends and delve into the details of a particular fictional span of time. You begin by defining the time period that you will work within and then take turns making up and modifying the various details of events within the time period. The book is about 80 pages, softbound, and is available for $19.99, a PDF for $9.99, and as a bundle with book and the PDF. You can find links to purchase the book from various sources off of the Lame Mage Productions page.

The Game Play
Microscope is very simple to play. Once the general concept is understood, a group can get into it almost immediately. The book advises that at least one person should read the book before playing, but there is no GM controlling the game. Everything is in  the hands of the players. The gameplay is simple and makes use of index cards to track the history. Here is a picture of example play from within the book. Each event added is marked by an index card with some notes and questions. There are also markings for whether the element is light or dark. By the end of the game, your table will be covered with cards outlining an incredible history.

When you sit down to play, you will first engage in a kind of getting started phase where you set some big picture items and absolutes about the history you are creating. You first state a story hook that determines what kind of time period you will be working with. Maybe it will be the rise and fall of the space-huns, the destruction of an ancient empire, or the journey that the fey races took to build the hidden city within the sewers of Chicago. This big picture hook helps the players narrow down what kind of events they’ll be making up.

Once the general idea is figured out, the players will then bookend the time period with a starting event and an ending one. This gives the Alpha and Omega of the game and lets players know what outcome they will be working towards. Players then get a chance to set certain ingredients into the stew of history as banned or definite.  After this phase, pretty much nothing remains sacred. You might declare a historical alliance between two races, hoping to use that all the way to the end of the timeline you are working with, but then another player decides that one of the ambassadors gets assassinated and that sparks off a war.

After the initial phase of the play is set up, the players take turns moving through the game and placing Periods, Events, and Scenes into play. The person whose turn it is gets the title of Lens, because they are the one looking in to the history at the current time. Periods are a large chunk of time that could encompass many events. Events are smaller chunks that are very specific. They help determine how the larger periods play out. These elements are narrated by a single player, but can be modified later by other players adding in their own events and periods. Scenes are deep zoom on the metaphorical microscope. They are the events that aren’t determined solely by one player, instead they start with a question about how something particular happens and then the players act out the specific parts to determine how it happens.

Gameplay goes on like this until the players are pretty much ready to end the game. The history is built and defined, stored on the index cards, and can be pulled out again at a later time to examine and add to. The game only ends when the players are ready for it to end.

Narrative Wins The Day
As you can probably determine, Microscope is all about the narrative. This makes it a perfect game for those groups who like to tell stories and can take turns. One thing the book mentions is that this is not a collaborative narrative in the sense that everyone gets a say in everything. When a person is on their turn, very little is out of their control. To try to build a history where every player has some say in every little thing would bog things down and prevent tumultuous events occurring. The players collaborate on the big picture, but individual events are in the purview of individual players. That doesn’t mean an event can’t be changed by subsequent events, it just means that you don’t get to say “Nuh-uh, that messes up something I was planning”. I can see some players having a hard time destroying elements that other players created, but that very conflict is what makes history move along.

One other thing to mention about Narrative, the book is wordy and full of narrative advice.  After the play section, a good 30 pages of the book are dedicated to advice from the creator. This section acts as a kind of play notes, developer’s corner, and filler section. A lot of the advice is good, but some of it feels like filler to expand the book’s page count. I’m not sure much of it is necessary, but I can also see that some players who prefer more strictured or controlled gaming styles might need the extra clarifications and guidance to bridge the gap into the narrative style of play. Also, you can’t really beat play examples and advice from the developers of a game.

The Incorporation Factor
While Microscope is fun as a stand alone game, it has a lot of application as an addition onto other games. Using Microscope you could build the backstory of campaign world, play out the plot of a novel you are contemplating, or collaboratively flesh out the details of a chunk of unexplored history in an established world setting. I might actually make use of it in just that way when I start developing an unexplored continent in a game world I work on. Microscope would also be easily adapted to an online play style. With a simple shared desktop and a program to make notes, like Text Block Writer or another virtual index card program, one could easily run the game with friends far away.

Final Thoughts
I really liked Microscope. It seems like a great history building game, and something I’ll probably go to when I want to build some ideas collaboratively with my group. I found the writing to be a bit too structured for how I like to play games, but I fully understand how the elements that restrain are there for a reason. I see a lot of room for Microscope at gaming tables, and I also see a lot of room for it at the tables of game developers. There is something about it that organizes the often chaotic process of putting together a world in a way that people can work with. Even if this isn’t the type of game your group usually plays, you’ll get your money’s worth with just one session.

The Overview

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit (Vornheim for short) is a 64 page, hard cover book in the A4 format.  The book jacket is full color and two sided, with a rough drawn map of the city of Vornheim on the inside (a larger version of the map is available on their website). The book itself, cover included, is black and white. The layout is 2 column and the font is pretty standard. The artwork is rough pencil sketch art,which fits for the theme of the book.

The book is separated into various sections, but there are two general parts to the book. The first is about the established parts of Vornheim, the city that is featured in Zak S’ “I Hit It With My Axe” campaign. The other part is a series of tools, tables, and tricks that Zak uses when he runs his game, bringing Vornheim to life. While the book is written with D&D (or Retro Clones) in mind, there is very little of it that cannot be ported to other systems.

The City of Vornheim

The first part of the book details the city of Vornheim. The city has a very old school feel, with its strange nobles, odd landmarks, and quirky customs. The book provides details for the city, but not so much detail that it paints a GM into a corner. They help evoke the feel for the city, and do a great job in giving Vornheim a unique feel. My favorite detail in this section is that the skins of all snakes can be read like books, and that different snakes provide different types of literature on their skins; weird and cool.

There are a number of unique locations which are also detailed within the book. Each location is given some background, a rough pencil map, and some encounters. The locations are very Gygaxian in their descriptions, and have a true sense of the alien or weird to them. My favorite is the Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng, which has a great background and comes complete with the Xortoise, a 4 headed tortoise with a central mouth in its shell.

The city details are great if you want to run Vornheim as a campaign location. They give you a few specific locations to drop into your game, and they also give you a good indication of the look and feel of the city. If you are not planning on using Vornheim in your campaign, you can easily borrow any of the locations and transplant them into your campaign. They will feel the most natural in a old school type of game.

The Complete City Kit

In the second section of the book, Zack supplies us with a series of rules, tips, and tables for running city adventures. This is where the book really took off for me. I found all the material in this section of value as is, or with just a few modifications.

There are a number of tables in this section designed to help the GM come up with interesting details in the middle of their game. Here are a sample of the tables that the book contains:

• Aristocrats (the various nobles within the city)
• Books (contents of found books and their value)
• City NPC’s (people to bump into on the streets)
• NPC Connections (a novel way to establish a relationship between up to 4 NPC’s)
• I Search The Body (things you find on a looted body)

In addition to the interior tables, it is worth mentioning the ingenious front and back covers. Each contains a ring of numbers (around all 4 edges on the front, and around 3 edges in the back; the fourth edge being hit locations). The mechanism is to drop a d4 onto the cover and look at what row or column the lines from the die intersect on all 4 edges. These numbers then correspond to a series of tables which you can use to make up stats for an NPC, the cost of an inn, the size of a room, or the range and damage for an attack. It is very quick and flexible, and a great aid for an ad libbing GM.

The tables are helpful, but some of the tips and rules are what make this book even more valuable. There are some great tips on how to abstract neighborhoods and their relations to one another. A helpful tip is included for creating roads on the fly using 2d10, which creates very organic looking results. There is a tip for creating building floor plans with a few d4’s that would be useful in a number of genres. There is also an equipment price shortcut that seems a bit strange at first, but I could see it being a great on the fly tool.

Vornheim also contains several sections which talk about the differences between adventuring within a city, and within dungeon or wilderness environments, with relation to movement, resources, and purpose. They are short in text but very insightful, and gave me a very different perspective about how to run city adventures and what to focus on when I do.

Why GM’s Will Want Vornheim

If you do not have any interest in Vornheim as a city, the City Kit is a great resource for running your own city adventures. Depending on the style and setting of your campaign, the tables could be used as is, or could be inspiration for creating your own tables. The advice on City Crawls, and the techniques of using the dice for locations and shapes of roads could be used in any game. Any game master who is running a city-based campaign is going to find something in this book that they can pull into their game.

Vornheim is a great resource for GM’s who lean towards improvisation. The tools given are as useful for advance prep as they are for deploying on the fly. Most of the tools only require a few standard dice, and a lookup on a single table. As a GM, I want the PDF version of this book so that I can print some of these tables out and have them at the ready, rather than flipping for them in the book.

Concluding Thoughts

It is hard not to think of the epic Ptolus when you think of city supplements; it is, after all, the most definitive book detailing a fantasy city that has been made for RPG’s. If Ptolus is like the Gutenberg Bible of city supplements, I would then say that Vornheim is the Anarchist’s Cookbook. It is rough looking, edgy, and designed not to tell you about a city, but to empower you to create your own. It is purposefully incomplete, and thus creates gaps that your mind will fill in as you read each section. Armed with the tools between these two covers, a GM will be prepared to bring Vornheim or any fantasy city to life.

You can purchase Vornheim at Indie Press Revolution in Print, PDF, or bundled. It is also available on DriveThruRPG in PDF.

The Review

I’ve already put a disclaimer that I was comped a copy of the game for review purposes, but I’m going to throw out another disclaimer here. I’m a HUGE frigging Tolkien fan. I grew up reading the Hobbit and watching the animated movies. I laboriously delved into the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy about 4 years earlier than I should have, but I still appreciated it at a young age and I re-read it every couple of years. So I wondered how I would look at the game as I reviewed it. Would I be overly critical of it as a fan? Would I be overly critical of it as a GM and player, looking for a good game despite the setting? As I approached the game, I set my mind to look at it from three perspectives. How does it play as a game? How does it render Tolkien’s Middle Earth? What makes it different from the many fantasy RPGs that have roots in Tolkien’s world?

The brief answer to those questions is that The One Ring is a very structured RPG that aims to give you a very good Tolkien-esque playing experience. The mechanics are solid, the book is beautiful, and the feeling of Middle Earth oozes off of every page. If you are the type of gamer who likes incredibly open games with limitless options, that’s not what this is. However, if you are looking for an RPG that stays true to the themes and feel of Tolkien, then this will meet your desires perfectly. Let’s get to the details, shall we.

The Product
The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the WIld is a game, not just a single book. When you buy the product ($59.99) you receive 2 full color books, 2 full color maps, a set of customized dice (though you can substitute d6 and d12), and sturdy cardboard shell to contain it all in. The Loremaster’s Book is 144 pages and the Adventurer’s Book is 192. Each book in the game contains a decent index that makes it easy to find information quickly.

Game Mechanics

The core game mechanics are relatively simple. Task resolution is handled by rolling a number d6 equal to a skill rating and 1d12 that is called the fate die. The numbers on all of these are added up and compared against a target number. Beating the target number means you are successful, missing it means unsuccessful…

except that the die themselves are unique and can change some of the outcomes. On each die are different runes that can affect how the roll goes. For instance, rolling a 12 on the feat die (the Gandalf Rune) makes the action automatically successful. An 11 (the Mark of Sauron), in most circumstances, counts as a 0. Determining degree of success can be done by noting success runes on the D6 die. The more success runes showing on the dice the more spectacular the success can be considered. Additionally, a character can spend a Hope point to add a bonus based on one of their attributes. A typical roll might look like this:

GM: Your boat rushes towards the waterfall. The rest of the company are on the banks, attempting to throw a rope towards you, but you are too far away. Make a boating roll to attempt to get close enough in time to grab the rope. The Target number is 17.

Player: The player has a boating skill of 3. He rolls 3d6 (success die) + 1d12 (feat die), getting 13 on the roll. I’m going to spend a hope point. Can I add in my body score?

GM: OK. What does that bring you up to?

Player: 18.

GM: Good, you make it. Any success runes?

Player: Nope.

GM: With a mighty heave of the oar, you push the boat closer to the shore as a rope is flung your way. Grasping the wet and soggy hemp you feel it slipping under your hand. Gripping so tight that you can see tricklets of blood coming from your hands, you maintain hold of the rope and pull yourself in.

 

When I first read over the success rune mechanics, I had to digest them a bit. The success was determined by the number, so why bother with the success runes on the die? I realized after reading through more of the book and seeing some of the examples that they can really function as a storytelling aid. Players like their characters to look cool, and when given the opportunity to control how their actions look inside the game, they’ll usually opt for the most awesome over the top outcome possible. With the success runes however, there is an ebb and flow that helps the story. Yes you succeeded, but how well that comes out in the story can still be left up to the dice. More success runes, the more incredible and heroic. Less, and the Game Master or player can narrate it in a more muted or less flattering style. The success still stands, but their is some direction to the narration. If  used properly, I can see this really enforcing the story aspect of the game.

And that is one thing that The One Ring strives to do, help you build a Tolkien-esque story. There is a plethora of information on how to play the game and get a game feeling that resonates with the writing found in Tolkien’s Middle Earth works. In that sense, it is a bit more structured than some other RPGS, but it is a necessary kind of stricture that helps enforce the feeling of the world. You won’t easily find magic weapons or be wielding massive spells that could destroy the world, the mechanics don’t support dungeon crawls or massive whittle-down slugfests with dragons. What the mechanics do is make it feel like every hit counts and when you HAVE to roll the dice you are doing so with purpose. Big things are on the line when the rolling gets called for.

The character creation mechanics are also definitely Tolkien. One of the first things you notice is that the Culture that you choose takes the place of a race or class and determines a lot of the core aspects of your character. The cultures are things like The Elves of Mirkwood, Beornings, or Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain. While these don’t define everything about your character, they do provide a particular base. Choosing the culture that fits the type of play you want to engage in will be important. There is room to play around here though. Once you step past the culture section, you are able to choose many different things. Your Standard of Living, Calling (what you do), Shadow Weakness (major flaw), Attributes, Skills, Valour, Wisdom, Hope, and Shadow . All of these factors provide you a different way to flavor your character and set them apart from the cultural base. Choosing different Skills and Backgrounds will also help you get a unique character. You won’t be limited to playing a Legolas or Boromir clone unless that is what you really want. One thing to mention about character creation, is that many of the traits and backgrounds you can build into your character act as gimmes or enablers. There aren’t mechanics provided or necessary with them, but having the trait or background enables you to do things other characters would have a harder time with. Possessing the Lordly trait might get you an audience with a king while having Beast-Lore lets you track and have knowledge of animals in the area.

The Loremaster’s book is a great resource that provides information on many diverse subjects related to the game. There is advice on how to run the game, stats for various creatures, rules for becoming corrupted by the shadow, storytelling tricks and tips, etc. It’s what you would expect from a basic GM’s book, but like the rest of the product, it’s aimed at helping you run a great Tolkien themed game.

Setting

I’m always interested in the setting information for licensed settings or settings with an established fan base of their own. How does the RPG tackle the setting? Would it make a good introduction for the broader world? Does it stay true to at least the feel of the source material? The One Ring is dead on for a Tolkien-ish feel. I’ve mentioned how the mechanics support playing to the feel of Middle Earth, but the setting information hammers it home. Quotes form Tolkien can be found all over within the book and the language of the flavor text (when not pulled from the source) evokes the source. The setting as described starts right after the events of the Hobbit. The information in the next two books in the One Ring series will take it up to the twilight of the Third Age where Return of The King leaves off. Adventures over the Edge of the Wild deals primarily with the lands described in the Hobbit and the Wilderlands. There is very detailed setting information provided in an easy to grab form. You won’t feel like you are reading a history lesson when going through the setting information, but you’ll get the facts that you need.

If you want to step outside of the Wilderlands with your adventures, you might find it a small bit cumbersome. However, a moderate knowledge of the lands of Middle earth will let a GM fill in the gaps and take the party outside of the lands presented in Adventures over the Edge of the Wild. The approach of limited area is a good one for the theme of the game. It provides enough detail for GMs and players, but doesn’t allow the game to jump from local heroes to world-ending badasses immediately, a feeling I’ve had as a player in many D&D/Shadowrun/White-Wolf games. No, the game sticks to the feel of Tolkien and the limitations feel more like familiar borders as opposed to imposing walls. As I mentioned, it wouldn’t be hard to take a group outside of the presented lands, but a basic knowledge/research of Middle Earth will help if you decide to.

Art

I’m going to let the video speak to the beauty of the books, but I’ll drop a few pictures in here for the non-video watching readers. The watercolor style captures the feel of Tolkien beautifully. The art is detailed and exquisite. The graphic design and borders hit right to the style that fans have come to expect. It isn’t hard to tell that this is a book that took a decent chunk of money to make. It will also be one of the showpieces of your collection on it’s visual merits alone.

Overall
Overall this is a great game.The mechanics are simple but provide an extra layer to the dice rolling that can great change the feeling of successes and failures. Everything about The One Ring strives to marry the feel of Middle Earth to the action and story going on at the gaming table. It might not resonate with gamers who have only experienced Tolkien through the pages of fantasy games and the millions of fantasy books which were inspired by his initial works, but it might act as a good stepping stone for those kinds of gamers to get into the world of Tolkien. The One Ring is a beautiful product, full of detail, exquisite art, and great writing aimed at one single purpose – to help your game feel like it really is in Middle Earth.

I’ve never tried to run a middle-earth game in a system that wasn’t built around it, so I wonder how well you can capture the feeling without strict attention to detail or hacking of the system to support the theme? Have you ever tried it, or have you relied on products like this that make it their goal to get the feeling of the setting down?

That means this is going to be partially a read through review, and that’s a real shame because the moment I laid eyes on this thing it was screaming inside my head to be run!

The Basics
Courts of the Shadow Fey is a 4th edition  D&D module/mini-campaign written primarily by Wolfgang Baur. It is part of the Open Design project. It ranks in at 101 pages and is currently available in PDF and softcover B&W from Drive Thru RPG. The campaign starts at 12th level and goes up to 15th, going through a decent part of paragon tier.
<<<SPOILERS BELOW>>>>

The basics of the plot are that the party gets involved with a dispute between two courts of fey (faery, wild things, mythical beings), the Winter Court and the Summer Court. They are in a dispute with the free city of Zobeck over a treaty. Feeling the city broke an ancient treaty, the Fey reclaim ownership of the city, introduing all sorts of odd and restrictive laws to control the people. The PCs are faced with the challenge of ending the faery rule there and returning normality to the realm.

Ok, those are the by the book basics, now let me tell you what the module is really about. First off, make no bones about it, this is a mini-campaign fully fleshed out and packed full of content. This is also not a straight dungeon run, kill and loot, or return with the McGuffin artifact to save the world. This is something much much more. Playing Courts of the Shadow Fey is like playing through Shakespeare’s take on the darkest of Grimm’s faery tales. It is a module full of political intrigue, unique setting elements, and excellent Game Master support. The one thing I was most curious about upon getting to book was how well a 4th edition campaign would take on the often nebulous and eccentric realm of faery. I wondered if a 4th edition game could really handle it well and stay true to 4th edition’s play style. Magically, it did just that. There is a lot of information and extra content to help portray the often madcap world of faery, but there was also a close attention to the mechanical detail and crunch. This is a book that players will find interesting in both their opportunities for characterization and roleplaying as well as challenging and fun mechanically. That means that there is a lot of content in the book, which can be a bit daunting. Thankfully, the book’s excellent organization makes it easy to use at the table. Ok, enough with the basic overview, let’s get down into the nitty gritty.

 Writing
One of the things that struck me most upon opening up the PDF of Courts of the Shadow Fey was the language. Baur shows a definite familiarity and love for the source material. The sections of the book dealing with non-mechanical elements are full of evocative and poetic language that draws you into a thought pattern perfect for portraying the wild and capricious nature of the fey.

Baur knows when to pull back though. While much of the descriptive and flavor text language feels like it comes from Ariel or Puck, none of this gets in the way of the using the book to run the campaign. When it comes to the actual mechanics and descriptions of how NPCs and enemies act and are played, the writing is clear, simple, and easy to grasp.

The writing strikes a nice balance between poetic and useful, without tipping too far into either area. The content of the campaign also goes out of its way to help a Game Master evoke the feeling of the fey realms, even if they aren’t familiar with faery and myth stories in any way. Parallels to D&D specific elements are made and then described. Charts of atmospheric fey elements or court gossip are included throughout the work. Names the fit the loose constraints of faery naming styles or myth are given alongside of more mundane names.

Another great element of the writing were the design tips. Wolfgang includes many asides that explain why elements are portrayed in the way they are. Sometimes he explains why having this element up front is good for pacing or what kinds of things you can do to help players work through the various mysteries surrounding them. Sometimes they are just good general advice that any game master can use.

Playing the Campaign
I’ve mentioned it already, but it bears repeating. This is not a standard dungeon run or kill it and take it’s stuff game. There is plenty of combat and chance for adventure, but that isn’t how the players are going to primarily progress. In fact, there is a lot of stuff that goes on in what would traditionally be considered downtime. The players will be engaged in the campaign for MONTHS and MONTHS of in-world time while they investigate, interact with the courts, gain status, go on epic quests to curry favor or retrieve information, etc. During this down time, it might not be a bad idea to adopt a disjointed way of telling the story. Instead of trying to keep things chronological, allowing the players to enact plans, talk to people, and interact with NPCs without worrying too much about when they actually do it in the game’s calendar might not be a bad idea. I.e. “Sometime before we leave to hunt down that mythical beast for the Sixes and Orwin, I see if I can do some dueling to up my status. I’m going to try to bribe Whitemist with some of that fine wine we got.” Letting things occur in a very freeform way during the quieter times can allow the players to really engage the rich and vibrant world. Printing the elements of the book that act as a cheat sheet for names wouldn’t hurt either. There is a lot here, but that means there is a lot your players are going to want to dig into in a very individual sense. Right up front, Baur describes the campaign as a bucket architecture which is like multiple sandboxes with things going on all the time. Certain scenes are contingent on other scenes, but there are limitless ways to interact with the scenes.

Combat – It’s gonna kick your players’ asses
The adventure will take your players through the beginnings of Paragon tier, and by that point the PCs can be pretty powerful. That won’t be a problem though. The combats are made to kick ass and progress the story. The encounters are carefully crafted to fit the scenarios and give the players a fitting challenge. They are also very malleable. Each encounter is tweaked to fit parties at different levels, adding in enemies and describing different tactics. So if you find that the PCs aren’t breaking a sweat, then you can grab the encounter for a level or two above the PCs level right from the same page. I’m used to tweaking combats in D&D to provide a better challenge for my players, but the work here was already done for the Game Master. I was also pleased to find one thing that I do for 4th edition already included. Wolfgang has included rules and tweaks for quicker combats right inside the stat blocks. Within parentheses in each stat block, one can find stats for less HP and heavier damage. This might be something common to other Open Design projects or it might be a standard meme in 4th edition (I kept my group together for about 4 sessions and didn’t get much more play time than that) , but wherever it came from it was greatly appreciated.

Options – They’re everywhere
One of the things that needs to be noted (and praised) is the fact that there are multiple options for every scenario. When the PCs come across an encounter, the writing outlines how to handle it in case they take it in different ways. Not every encounter that was statted as a combat had to be completed that way. There were diplomatic options, trickery options, and much more. There were even combat options for more diplomatic encounters, in case your players take the smash first and talk later approach.

Fun And Interesting Mechanics
Being a campaign about the fey realms, I would have been disappointed if there weren’t a few things to turn the PCs on their heads (literally). There are a lot of fun and interesting fey themed feats, spells, and magic that can be brought into play. Things like side effects of using rituals, oddities of combat scenarios that only happen in a world that obeys the laws of magic and not physics, and a fun and interesting status system that gives character development an extra boost. These fun and interesting fey themed mechanics are consistent throughout the campaign. Depending on how the PCs play it, they could leave with a lot of new and unique elements to their characters, as well as a few incredible titles.

Ease Of Use – It’s pretty easy, despite looking complex
While reading through the book it can seem very daunting to think about running so involved and intricate a campaign. The book is chock full of charts, lists, and other tidbits to help you run a great game. There are gossip charts, lists of names of the fey NPCs in the courts, a random table or overheard comments, etc. The Game Master won’t have to reach very far to get something they can use. Aside from the multitude of lists, the information is presented in a way that prevents a lot of page flipping during the intense action and combat moments.

Visuals
Following the theme or the rest of the product, the art and design is evocative and right on target with the fey theme. The book is full of evocative visual elements, whether they are maps, art, borders, or interesting typography. There is very little about this book visually that isn’t striking. There is not a moment where the design doesn’t draw you in.

Conclusions
The saddest thing about reviewing this adventure was that it started at 12th level and my group imploded before I could get them familiar enough with 4th edition to jump them up and start in on it. This is an incredible book. I’m not a big 4th edition fan, but my initial read through made me want to give the system a try just to get to this campaign. If you are at all a fan of works like Sandman, Jonathon Norell and Mr. Strange, Stardust, anything by Charles DeLint or Jim Butcher and ever wanted to get the feeling of those works in an adventure, then this is definitely up your alley. Despite getting a comp PDF copy of the book, I’m going to be picking up the adventure in dead tree form and work on adapting it to a system my group is already familiar with. The 4e content is great and will give your 4e group a well thought out and interesting place to spend a few levels. Be warned though, if your group is stereotypically combat heavy this will likely change their play style and open them up to a lot of new ideas about gaming.

In years past you have picked out some great games to review: Hackmaster Basic [here and here], Realms of Cthulu, and Apocalypse World. You have had a great knack for finding some cool stuff to review. This year fellow Gnome, John Arcadian has offered to review one of the products you suggest.

With GenCon under two weeks away, I would like take on this quest once again. So lets cover a few things…

Lets Review The Rules

Just like last year, there are a few conditions on what we will pick up for review. These are the same as in years past, but let’s review, in case you forgot:

• RPG Rules or Gaming Accessory only—While we like board games, card games, and such, The Stew is an RPG Blog, so lets keep it to an RPG rulebook or gaming accessory. We would rather not review an adventure either since they rarely are meaty enough for a full review.

• Something New—While just about anything can be found out on the convention floor, we are not going to review the AD&D A-Series adventures (though they are awesome). Please pick something that has recently come out, that you have not had a chance to pick up at your local gaming store, or is debuting at Gen Con.

• Something we have not reviewed before– While we are not a product review site, we have had the chance to do some great reviews. Check out our Review section for all our past reviews. Obviously, don’t pick one of those.

• Let’s not break the bank—While we love you guys, bank accounts have limits. So lets keep this to about $30 (or a bit over…).

Get Picking

Ok, there are the rules. In the comments section, put down your choice of what you would like us to pick up. Next Friiday (8/29), I will announce the items that we are going to pick up in the GnomeSpotting 2011 article.  Then after GenCon we will put together some reviews.

So, what do you want to see reviewed…

Disclaimer: Bully Pulpit Games graciously provided this Pointy Hat a PDF copy of the Fiasco Companion.

The Breakdown

The Fiasco Companion was written by Jason Morningstar and Steve Segedy. This book is 170 pages, 35 pages longer than the Fiasco rulebook. The cool mod artwork from the original Fiasco book continues in the Companion. A sign of the immense popularity of the book comes nine pages past the cover, with a foreword from geek icon Wil Wheaton, who took a shine to Fiasco at Gen Con 2010.

The Chilton Guide to Fiasco

Back in my youth, when you could easily work on your car in your garage, it was customary to get the Chilton’s guide for your car, so that you knew everything thing there was about the inner workings of your car; every single part. In many ways the Fiasco Companion is the Chilton’s manual for Fiasco; taking you under the hood and showing you how the whole thing runs.  The book is broken up into five parts with several subsections in each Part.

Part 1: Beehive Tetherball

This section is all about improving your Fiasco play.  Each of the sections in this part are aimed at making you an awesome Fiasco player. Several of the techniques draw from the improv theater community, and are aimed at increasing the collaboration around the table. This section also talks about techniques for Editing and Pacing of the story; to help keep the action at the table moving along. There is a section on rookie mistakes, the gotchas that can stymie a hot session. This section ends with some alternative methods for the order of play.

Personally, I found this section a very solid discussion on what makes for good play at the table. A number of these techniques I had in my toolbox, from other improv style games that I have played. For those that are not as comfortable with storytelling style games, this is a good section to get some solid advice. I was most intrigued by the alternative orders of play, and will be looking to put them into play in the near future.

Part 2: Herding Leopards

This section focuses on how to run Fiasco. It starts with a section about Facilitating Fiasco; having one player facilitate the game, by leading the group through the order of play. There is a good discussion about the proper sizing of a Fiasco game, and the challenges of when there are too few and too many players at the table. The section goes on to talk about how to set up materials for running Fiasco; coming up with a kit of pens, index cards, etc to help run your game. Finally, this section concludes with discussions on running Fiasco at conventions and via the Internet, discussing the nuances of how Fiasco runs in both of these arenas.

Personally, I really connected to the Facilitating section, as I have been performing this role in the games that I have played. I also liked the discussion on the sizing of the game. I had a feeling there was an optimal number for playing the game, and it was confirmed in this section (sorry read the book to find out the optimal size). I am also going to be setting up my own Fiasco kit for future games.

Part 3: 144 Ways To Hurt A Dude

This section is the ultimate instructional manual for how to create a Playset. Playsets are the settings that are played in Fiasco, and are made up of Relationships, Needs, Objects, and Locations. A good playset is the foundation to a great Fiasco game. This chapter provides sections on how to create each of the major parts of a playset, and goes into depth on how each of the components works. With each of the major parts covered there are some advance notes, and then finally instructions on how to publish your killer playset so that you can share it with the world.

If the Fiasco Companion was only this chapter, it would be worth every penny.  This chapter is pure gold, and the advice that it provides opened my eyes about the importance of what goes into a playset, and more importantly what not to put into a playset. After reading this chapter, I became aware that the construction of a playset is not just a random list of crazy objects thrown together, but rather there is a real purpose to what elements go into a playset.

Part 4: Spiking The Punch

Hacking.  Tinkering. This chapter goes into hacking the game and taking it past the established rules by introducing a few optional elements. There are rules for Stunt Dice that trigger a special effect in-game. There are rules for how to create a custom Tilt Table and custom Aftermath tables, and the effects of what happens when you do so. There is an example of softer Tilt and Aftermath tables, which drift the traditional Fiasco game from Very Bad Things to something more like The Breakfast Club.

I found this section fascinating. I will at some point put Stunt Dice into an upcoming session. I had not really thought about how the customization of the Tilt and Aftermath could dramatically effect the play of the game. I am not sure if I would change them, but I might use the custom ones to create a more light hearted game. The example tables do a great job of showing just how powerful changing these two things can be to the game. It also highlights just how flexible the game can be when tinkering with some of the core structures.

Part 5: Feeding The Wood Chipper

The last section of the book is dedicated to a series of discussions about using Fiasco with different groups. The first section talks about using Fiasco with students as a learning tool. The next section discusses Fiasco as a writers tool, in a round-table with Nathan Russell, Will Hindmarch, and John Rogers (Executive Producer of Leverage). Then a discussion with a group of improv actors, and ways to use Fiasco as a tool for improv theater. This section concludes with some words of wisdom from Wil Wheaton, who provides the Big Six, six tips for playing Fiasco.

This chapter was interesting, but was not the big draw for me. This chapter was enjoyable to read, but really did not deliver too many ideas for my next game. It does show that there are ways to take Fiasco past just an evening of fun around the table. That said, the Big Six are great tips for playing Fiasco, and might have been equally at home in Part 1.

Oh Yes…There Are More Playsets

What would a Fiasco book be without some playsets for creating all new mayhem? The Fiasco Companion does not disappoint, with four new playsets:

• Fiasco High
• Regina’s Wedding
• Vegas
• Mission to Mercury

Each playset has a half-page discussion, with talk about how some of the modifications such as Stunt Dice or the softer Tilt and Aftermath would work for each one.

I have had a chance to play the Vegas playset, and it was quite enjoyable. The other three playsets look equally enticing and will come up in future sessions.

Wrap Up

For a fan of Fiasco, the Fiasco Companion is a wonderful under the hood look at the inner workings of this brilliant game. The advice for perfecting your game play is spot on and completely usable. Playset creation rules are a must for trying your hand at playset creation. The alternate rules are intriguing, and beckon experimentation. It is impossible to read this book and not come away with a short list of things to try in your next Fiasco game. The Fiasco Companion takes Fiasco past its solid formula and reveals ways that this game can expand and morph into other creations that are no less interesting.  It is a true and worthy companion to Fiasco.

Game Designers take note. Please follow up your games with a Companion book similar to the Fiasco Companion, rather than just pumping out splat books. I think books like this which speak to the GM (and players), open the gates for a GM to revitalize and re-invent a game they already love, increasing their commitment to the game, rather than moving on to the next shiny.

Fiasco Companion can be found at the Bully Pulpit website, and at DrivethruRPG.com.

Trust me. There is a point to this.

I do not like ham. Never have. I like bacon, pork chops, and pork roast, but I have never liked ham. I cannot blame this on ham though, because this is a matter of my personal tastes. You can serve a world class Virginia smoked ham prepared by Woflgang Puck and I probably still would not like it. Every time that I have tried it ham it turns out to be not my thing. I do not hate ham, but I do avoid eating it.

My personal tastes though should not blind me to the fact that you can still have a good quality product in the form of ham. Obviously other people like ham, and I should not try to convince them otherwise.

What does this have to do with The Dresden Files RPG by Evil Hat Productions? The Dresden Files RPG is an obviously well-crafted product that will appeal to many people that I myself am not that crazy for. Never before have I reviewed a product that did not appeal to me, but that I knew would appeal to others on a large scale. I finally understand how my friends who do not like the film The Godfather feel.

This product has many outstanding qualities, and you can easily find others singing its praises on the Internet through various web sites. It and its companion product Our World have already been nominated for the 2011 Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game and Best RPG Supplement. It has already won the Golden Geek for the Best Artwork/Presentation and Game of the Year. It recently made the prestigious short-list for the Diana Jones Award. I am positive that The Dresden Files RPG is also going to be a force to contend with at this year’s ENnie Awards.

Not a great place to be as a reviewer. How do I tell you the obvious (this is a really good product), and still be honest (this is a really good product that I do not care for)?

In an attempt to be both both fair to The Dresden Files RPG, as well as to share my honest opinion with all of you I am splitting this review across two web sites. Here on Gnome Stew I am going to tell you why this product deserves the praise that it is receiving, and over on my personal blog SinisterForces I am going to share with you why I do not care for the product for personal reasons. Read one of the two reviews, or read them both, but remember that my reasons for not liking the product are based upon my personal tastes as a fan of RPGs.

One last thing: I was offered a PDF copy of The Dresden Files RPG: Your Story, The Dresden Files RPG: Our World, and the free adventure Neutral Grounds by Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions in response to a blog post that I wrote. Props to Fred for letting his work stand on its own.

Let’s begin…

This is the most beautiful RPG product that I have seen in a long time.

From the moment you pick up The Dresden Files RPG full color artwork greets you on the cover and continues to leap out at you from its 400 plus pages. This is nothing new for an RPG to have, but unlike some products where the artwork seems to be placed on the page merely because people expect it to be there in the typical “chapter starts with big artwork, smaller pieces provide filler” formula (I’m looking at you Wizards) with The Dresden Files RPG every item on the page is used to accentuate the product. The layout work done on this product is absolutely incredible. You get a real sense of the book being a dynamic story unto itself, and in may ways it is (more on that later).

Every details seems to have been picked on purpose to ensure that this RPG does not just present you with the rules but also sucks you into the game world. The fonts, borders, and everything else seems to fit perfectly into the setting that the product describes. This is not just a book, but a portal into the world of Harry Dresden.

And speaking of Harry Dresden…

I confess that I have only read three of the Harry Dresden books, but even with my limited knowledge of the Dresdenverse it is clear that this RPG is loyal to the source material. The way that skills, spells, and other such qualities are described shows how this was not just a product made to cash in on a hot licensed property, but instead is an homage to Jim Butcher’s tales of the only wizard detective listed in the phonebook.

One reason for this is because the book is designed to read as if the character Billy, a geeky werewolf who plays RPGs and is a close friend of Harry, has designed an RPG based upon the case files from Harry’s past adventures. Throughout the book there are notes being exchanged between Billy, Harry, and Harry’s advisor in the form of a soul-bound-to-a-skull named Bob. Anyone who has read any of the titles from the Dresden series will be treated to many references to events that occurred within the books. In some ways this book is not just an RPG but a reference guide to the Dresdenverse. Even if you have not read any of the books the RPG serves as a good introduction to the world of Harry Dresden which is by all means a fascinating one.

But what about the game?

Yes the book is gorgeous, yes the book has style, but none of that matters if the game sucks. Luckily the game is solid as well, and if you are a fan of the Fate system (Spirit of the Century, Strands of Fate, etc.) you will be happy to know that The Dresden Files RPG is the first product released using the new Fate 3.0 engine (correction: Spirit of the Century also from Evil Hat Productions was the first Fate 3.0 release). Fate is a fantastic rules system that focuses on the storytelling aspect of RPGs. It is a derivative of my personal favorite game system Fudge, and it stays true to its roots while at the same time expanding upon the system and tightening up a few parts as well.

Fair warning – Fate and Fudge are game systems that may not be for everyone. Luckily both are available for free on the web for you to try before you buy, and as much as I am a fan of these systems you should try them out first before buying The Dresden Files RPG.

In many ways Fate and Harry Dresden are a perfect fit, because magic in the works of Jim Butcher is not dependent so much on what something is but what it represents. Aspects in Fate work very much the same way, as they are traits that a character can tap in order to stay true to the character’s concept. This again just builds upon the synergy between the RPG and the published works.

Should you buy it?

With all of the production work that went into The Dresden Files RPG there has to be a price, and in this case that is literally the price! The Dresden Files RPG: Your Story is $49.99 in print and $25 for the PDF, while the companion book Our World which provides more detail for the setting of the Dresdenverse is $39.99 in print and $20 for the PDF. It should be noted though that Evil Hat Productions provides a PDF copy to anyone who buys a print version of their products through retailers, and orders placed through their online store for print products includes the PDF versions. That said, $90 is a lot of money to spend on an RPG given the many cheaper products that are out there. Is The Dresden Files RPG worth the money?

That is hard to say, because everyone’s financial situation is different. Perhaps it is better to think of it this way: Do you want a Mercedes? There are very few reasons to buy a Mercedes-Benz automobile from a practical standpoint. Most vehicles will deliver the basic functionality that a person needs from an automobile at far less a price, but a Mercedes-Benz delivers that same basic functionality with a higher level of comfort and quality. This RPG is not your typical collection of mechanics with a dash of setting thrown in (again, I’m looking at you Wizards). The Dresden Files RPG is more of a luxury purchase that is as much a work of art as it is an RPG. For some of you that $90 is not worth it, but for others $90 will be a bargain for the set.

Final Thought: It is deserving of all of the hype.

In the end The Dresden Files RPG is a solid piece of work that is elegant and well done. Fans of Harry Dresden will not be disappointed, and fans of Fate and Fudge have another high quality game available to them. Even gamers who have never played Fate and Fudge and who have never read any of the Harry Dresden series should check it out just to see what a classy job the folks at Evil Hat Productions did with these books.

One thing that I am certain of is that The Dresden Files RPG is worthy of all the praise and attention that the industry is bestowing upon it. Regardless of your personal tastes these books just radiate of being of a higher quality. At the very least Evil Hat Productions has raised the bar for RPGs across the board, and that is a good thing for all of us gamers as a whole.

Do you own The Dresden Files RPG? What do you think of its quality and content? Share your opinion with the rest of us by leaving a comment below.

DNAphil: I think it is safe to say that Fiasco has become a real break-out hit, with articles about the game all over the net, including the geek imprimatur from Wil Wheaton himself. How does it feel as a designer to have such a reception for your game?

Jason: Of course I’m gratified and a little surprised and certainly very proud of Fiasco. It makes me happy to hear about people playing and enjoying it. I set out to do some very specific things with the game, and Fiasco’s enthusiastic reception really validates my choices.

DNAphil: Fiasco with it’s core rules and the ingenious plugin playsets is a self-contained game. What then prompted you to start writing the Fiasco Companion? Was there anything you felt was missing from the game, or was it time to elevate the game up to a new level of play?

Jason: There’s nothing missing, but there’s a huge body of technique – both as a player and as a writer of supporting material like playsets -that isn’t articulated because it isn’t strictly necessary. It’s good stuff, though, and I find myself talking about it a lot to people who ask for feedback on their playsets. For example, gently laying on a story or two across multiple playset elements is a really good practice. In Flyover you’ve got the Latino center, the airport construction, Mexican drug dealers, and the Lowell family popping up here and there across Relationships, Needs, Objects and Locations. Sometimes none of those things enter a session, but they inform every session, and that’s cool. So we talk about that, and dozens of other similar things that make a playset excellent. The same goes for stuff you can bring as a player – endowment, reincorporation, all sorts of editing techniques, lots of stuff.

DNAphil: Of all the Fiasco playsets which have been released, what is your favorite? For me it’s a tie with Tales of Suburbia or World Tour.

Jason: I love each and every one like the unstable child it is. I think my favorite-favorite is High School, which will appear in the Fiasco Companion. The one I’ve played the most is A Small Southern Town, which is based on my wife’s home town and thus near to my heart.

DNAphil: So I have to ask…is there a Chicken Hut in her home town?

Jason: There’s no Chicken Hut in Elkin, NC but there is a Speedy Chef, which is what inspired me.

DNAphil: In playing, what was the craziest combination of Relationship, Motivation, Location, and Object you have ever seen come up in a game?

Jason: We had a game of Lucky Strike where the Relationships strongly implied that one character was really two wildly different people. In the rules I say “if it comes out unsatisfying and weird, just redo it,” but we decided to hang tough and make him a bizarre soldier who had two personalities that both had a unique rank and specialty in the Army. As icing on the cake, we had six people for a five player game, so that character had two players taking turns. It worked wonderfully and was pretty hilarious.

At Dreamation 2011 I had a game that was extremely gritty and hardcore until the very last scene, when the woman playing the scatter-brained love interest of a charismatic cult leader announced that her character was actually some kind of weird dryad tree spirit. We all rolled with it and she transformed, healed a guy who was dying in the predictable gun battle, and ended the game as a gnarled oak tree. I was surprised.

DNAphil: Can you give the Stew Eaters five reasons why Fiasco Companion will make their Fiasco games hotter than a stolen U-Haul with two tons of cartel coke inside.

Jason:

• Reason one: A whole chapter on being a better player. Advice on editing, using time to flash back and flash forward, endowing your friend’s scenes with cool details, reincorporating details, giving narrative gifts, and generally tearing it up.
• Reason two: A whole chapter on ways to change the game, including playing “melancholy Finnish tag-team style” and using stunt dice. Stunt dice? Oh, yes.
• Reason three: A whole chapter (see a trend?) on hacking the game, writing your own playsets, Tilt and Aftermath tables, and making it truly your own, all with worked examples.
• Reason four: A bunch of new playsets – High School, Regina’s Wedding, Mission to Mercury, and maybe some surprises. These were all hand picked to demonstrate concepts within the text and show the game’s potential extremes.
• Reason five: I can’t really talk about reason five, but you will certainly enjoy it.
• Bonus reason: Extensive interviews with educators, actors and writers (including some names you will certainly recognize) about using Fiasco to support pedagogy, performance, and the creative process. Really insightful, interesting stuff.

Thanks again to Jason for taking the time to give us the skinny on the upcoming Fiasco Companion. Right now the book is being targeted for “late spring.” We will keep you updated as the book gets closer to hitting the shelves.

If you have not played Fiasco yet, go and get some friends, the rules, and a playset, and prepare for some fantastic trouble. Fiasco can be found at Bully Pulpit Games, and DriveThruRPG.

Ok, lets talk about the books, and to talk about those we have to talk about GameplayWright Press. Back when I was first invited to write for Gnome Stew, I’d been trawling the blog scene as a silent reader for a while. One of the blogs that really impressed me was GamePlayWright. Written by two established industry veterans, Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball, the blog is an in-depth look at many of the meta issues surrounding gaming. It’s deep, sometimes full of big words, always well researched, and right up my alley. When they came out with a book called Things We Think About Games, I knew I’d be picking it up. When they came out with another book called The Bones: Us And Our Dice, I knew I had to get that one as well. If you are at all interested in the thoughts and reasons behind our gaming practices, these books are something you NEED to own.

*Well, kind of. They actually ride around in my messenger bag almost perpetually. They are two of my goto books for gaming advice. This is because of their nature as quick reads and because of the quality of the advice that comes from many different authors.

Things We Think About Games

Things We Think About Games (ISBN: 978-0-9818840-0-4) is a book of compact thoughts on gaming. Collecting more than 140 thoughts on gaming, Things We Think About Games is like the Tao Te Ching of gaming thought. Each piece of gaming thought in the first section of the book takes up, at most, 3/4 of a page. The majority of the thoughts are short and concise, revealing some interesting idea about gaming thought or history. Some of the passages have you saying “Why didn’t I ever think of that, it’s so obvious.”, some have you completely disagreeing, and some have you rolling them around inside your head engaging them in an internal dialogue. Talking about these is incredibly useless though, in order to understand what they are like you have to see a few:

One of my favorites,  #23:

In a tabletop roleplaying game, the characters are all wearing pants.

This is true even though none of the players informed the gamemaster that their characters were putting their pants on.

Issues such as these – things that any person would do without comment – are collectively “pants issues,” and players in any sane game may always assert that they have done such things if it ever becomes important.

Or the concise # 30:

Dollar for dollar, a roleplaying game is very nearly the most efficient entertainment you can buy.

or the piece of advice I wish all of my boardgaming friends would listen to, #112:

When explaining the rules, the first thing to do is tell me how to win.

What is my goal? How many points/territories/cards do I need to reach it?

The majority of the book is dedicated to small and intriguing tidbits like this. While most are as short as the ones above, many fill the whole page and provide more in-depth analysis of the thought at hand. The last few are lists of related advice from one author, each piece centering around a theme. 7 Lessons Learned From World Of Warcraft, by John August, compiles a smattering of real world lessons that one can learn from the game elements in WOW.

The many small tidbits and larger essays in Things We Think About Games are contributed by many sources. The bulk of the gaming thoughts are by the two listed authors, Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball, both of whom have a long list of credits in the gaming industry. There is also a great deal of advice by other authors: John August, Pat Harrigan, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, John Kovalic, Mike Selinker, and so on. The foreword is by Robin D. Laws and the introduction is by Wil Wheaton. This is a book full of big names with lots of great advice. This is a book I constantly go to for advice in all aspects of my gaming life. I find things in here that force me to think about games in new ways, as a game player, game master, and game designer.

The Bones

The Bones (ISBN: 978-0-9818840-1-1) is a book of essays, articles, and a comic or two all about gamers and our dice in all their fickle fortune and despair. Each article or essay is written by an established name in the gaming industry. Keith Baker, Matt Forbeck, Jess Hartley, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hit, Jesse Scoble, Paul Tevis, and Wil Wheaton just to name a few. Packed into the 209 pages of 1d6 articles and 1d20 essays (no joke, that is how the chapter list is laid out) are such gems as:

• Randomness: Blight or Bane – An in-depth look at the place of randomness in gaming.
• A HOBBIT’S CHANCES: AN INTERVIEW WITH CARDELL KERR  - An article about randomness in LOTRO and how random chance works when you don’t see the mechanic.
• Rolling In The Aisle – About a wedding where dice were used to determine if people had initiative on the bride and groom’s vows in order to declare objections to the wedding, as well as a great look at what gaming really is.
• The X Factor – A tale about the journey of one person through the world of dice and gaming, the start of third edition D&D, and how the D&D scene in the x-files episode Unusual Suspects may or may not have featured the line he wrote for it.

These are just 15.38% of the articles and essays in this book. Though each essay has a different style, each one is well crafted and in-depth enough to provide some real content. One of my worries when I heard about this book was that it would be like being back in college and reading dry and high brow papers about gaming. Definitely not the case. Each article and essay tackles their particular subset of gaming in such a way that they are interesting to read, even when they get into the deep stuff. The wide variety of articles that examine vastly different subjects keeps the book an interesting read that doesn’t repeat itself. When there is overlap in the subjects of the articles, as often happens with books like this, there is enough variance in how each author tackles it to keep them unique and enjoyable. Bones is definitely a must have for any gamer who has ever felt the anticipation as a die is rolling on the table, turned all their dice to the highest number available in order to court lady luck, or has ever held one of the “bones” in their hands.

I would suggest either of these books to any game master or player. They differ from other game mastering advice books in the fact that they sparks of inspiration and talk about the gaming experience as often as they talk about how to be better at it. I can’t really say anything more about the books, except  this: check them out for yourself:

http://gameplaywright.net/books/the-bones/

http://gameplaywright.net/books/things-we-think-about-games/

Enter From Here To There, a Goodman Games adventure pack containing 9 adventures. The nine adventures contained in this book are all fantasy based adventures made to be introduced to PCs while they are travelling. They are listed as 4e compatible and have all the requisite stat blocks and gridded maps required. The adventures are easy and small enough that they can be converted into a non 4e or a non D&D game system fairly easily. Reskinning for a different genre may take some work, but I can see some of the adventures being usable outside the fantasy D&D setting.

Format
The format of the book is what you would expect of an adventure book. It gets right down to the point and presents each adventure right after the necessary book elements like a title page and copyright page. The chapter listing has suggested levels included which is a very nice feature.

Adventures
The adventures themselves follow the same format, allowing for easy use and quick incorporation. Each adventure has an intro paragraph from the author talking about the bare bones or concepts in the adventure. Following this is an Adventure Summary section which lays out the basic flow of the adventure. In each adventure you will find an Encounter Table, summarizing the encounters, types, and locations; a Scaling Information section, providing tips on how to modify the adventure for stronger or weaker parties; an Adventure Background section, which gives the motivation and impetus for NPCs and enemies; a Getting The Players Involved section, which provides information on how to introduce the adventure to players; and finally all of the encounters and relevant adventure information with each encounter.

Each adventure is short, made for about a session’s play. The adventures are all written by different authors and they each have their own style and feeling. I read through three of the adventures: When Madness Seeps Through By Philippe-Antoine “Chattydm” Menard, The Toll Station By Adrian Pommier, and The Hanging Tree By Lee Hammock. Each had a unique flavor and feel, but each was well crafted and followed the easily runnable format. My game of choice isn’t D&D, but it is a fantasy game and each of these adventures would be easy to run and modify for my games.

Look And Feel
The adventures contain illustrative art, which is very good and evocative, and maps that could easily be drawn out. Printing the maps seems possible, but the size of many would require the blueprint printers found at big box office supply stores. The entire book, save the cover, is in B&W, but the art is of a style that emphasizes and works with that. It is definitely a pretty book to look at, and that helps inspire the GM when looking through the adventures. Some adventures even have printable handouts with the art included. These make for a great addition to the physical space of the game.

Conclusions
If you run 4th Edition D&D, or any fantasy game, this is a great book to have when you need to throw something at the PCs while they are on the road. The adventures are easily usable and would take much less than an hour of prep to incorporate them. Enough information is provided to jump right in. I’ll be using two of these adventures, When Madness Seeps Through and The Hanging Tree in my upcoming games, making some modifications and joining them together. At $6 it is hard to pass up. I got my copy on Drive Thru RPG. Goodman Games website lists it as available in stores, so if you want a paper copy check with your FLGS. This is definitely worth a purchase for any Game Master to have adventures on hand and ready to go.

Should you buy The Hidden Kingdom?  What are its selling points?  What are its flaws?  To find out read on, as I give you a brief tour of the world that is The Hidden Kingdom.

Full disclosure: Nevermet Press’ staff approached Gnome Stew’s authors to review The Hidden Kingdom, and for doing so I received a free PDF copy of the product and will be sent a print version as well.

What is “The Hidden Kingdom?”

The Hidden Kingdom is an organization of monks who wear red robes, gloves, and golden masks that hide all traces of their flesh.  They travel to cities in need of aid and work tirelessly to help the poor, sick, and downtrodden masses in whatever way they can.  When the monks of The Hidden Kingdom enter a city it is usually with the blessings of the local government and with the gratitude of the people.

Yet the secret of The Hidden Kingdom is that its members sacrifice everything to its service, including their very lives, to serve without question their founder – Brother Ptolemy.  Brother Ptolemy, who is indistinguishable to outsiders from the other monks of his order, hides a horrible truth from the world.  Brother Ptolemy desperately wants to save everyone not just from the pains of hunger, disease, and poverty but from the very cruelty of life itself.

Which is why Brother Ptolemy created a horrible magical plague that he unleashes onto unsuspecting people, so that when the monks of The Hidden Kingdom arrive to help them the people are more inclined to join The Hidden Kingdom’s ranks.  Brother Ptolemy puts a whole new spin on the phrase “Kill them with kindness.”

I could reveal more details behind Brother Ptolemy and The Hidden Kingdom, but this is such a well written product that readers will enjoy discovering those details for themselves.

Best Qualities

Overall The Hidden Kingdom is a good product that delivers exactly what it promises – a setting and an adventure.  I have read plenty of setting books that were more about maps and locations.  That is not a true setting, but merely a travel guide for a fictional world.  A true setting is a smattering of characters served up with a dash of dramatic tension and a side of plot potential which is what The Hidden Kingdom focuses upon.  The maps and the locations are a much smaller part of what a complete setting is, but you get that too in the form of the city state of Corwyn to which chapter 3 is dedicated.

Chapter 4 is the adventure and it is the bulk of this product consuming 64 of the 110 pages.  Titled “Uncovering the Kingdom” it is a strong blend of skill challenges, combat encounters, and role playing opportunities.  The combat encounters are tough and will challenge the players, but the opportunities to role play and investigate will provide plenty of challenges where dice are not needed.

Even after the players have finished the adventure a GM will have plenty of hooks and material to build more adventures with where Brother Ptolemy and The Hidden Kingdom can challenge the PCs again.  The Hidden Kingdom has the key ingredients needed to build an intriguing campaign with.

Throughout the product you will find plenty of interesting and inspiring artwork that immerses you even deeper into the setting of The Hidden Kingdom.  Some of it is rather simple, but none of it is what I would consider bad artwork.  None of the artwork appears to be generic fluff or filler either.  Every piece of artwork helps to define the setting and to illustrate the potential of the adventure.

Worst Qualities

Unfortunately there are some things about this product that I do not like, and while I appreciate that Nevermet Press is a small organization made up of RPG enthusiasts I would be letting fans of Gnome Stew down if I did not address two flaws in particular.

The Hidden Kingdom’s PDF has no bookmarks and no index was included in the text.  The lack of an index can sometimes be overcome with a more detailed table of contents, but the table of contents provided for The Hidden Kingdom will only help you find the start of a chapter or the single appendix within the product.  You will be flipping through this product quite a bit come game day.

Perhaps the lack of an index and keeping the table of contents short helped to reduce costs for the printed product, but no publisher of PDFs should skip the process of providing bookmarks for their product.  When you consider that the adventure is over half the product not having bookmarks to the individual encounters really limits the usefulness of the PDF if you run your games from a laptop.

The other big flaw of this product is that it has several typos and simple errors.  None of these errors make the product unusable, but they stick out like sore thumbs compared to how well written the product is overall.  An updated version of the PDF was released when I was halfway through reading my copy of the product that did correct some errors, but I did not have a chance to read that version from beginning to end and what I did read still had errors.  The errors that I found are excessive for a product of this page count.

Conclusion

Despite its flaws The Hidden Kingdom is still a good product overall for its price ($9.99 for the PDF, $14.99 for the print version).  For their money GMs will get a good challenging adventure with a rich setting that is intriguing and easily placed into any Dungeons & Dragons 4e campaign.  A GM could also adapt the materials provided to be used with other systems and even other genres to use in their game of choice.  In the end I say buy it if you like games full of political tension, conspiracies, and good old fashioned challenging combat.  Nevermet Press is also giving the PDF for free to those who purchase the the print version by November 30th and post a picture of the product to the Nevermet Press Facebook fan page.

Do you have a copy of The Hidden Kingdom?  Need more information before deciding to buy a copy?  If so, share your own review or questions in the comments section below.

“Life is like a box of ammo.” – Duke Nukem

At Con on the Cob (about which much more later), I ran across one of the cooler props I’ve seen in the last year (including Gen Con).  These are the AmmoCounters from Das Spiel Unker (a German pun for ‘The Basement Gamer’).

Some background: In addition to RPGs (and parentheses), I am a fan of firearms. I reload my own ammunition, shot competitive pistol events, and still have the .22 rifle I got for my 10th birthday. To me, there’s something very visceral about the sound and feel of brass cartridge cases.

So when fellow Gnome Patrick Benson called me over to another table in the “Mother of All Marketplaces” to show me these beauties, I was speechless (but only temporarily, of course).

Handcrafted from locally-grown hardwoods, with a hand-rubbed finish, these props are both beautiful and functional. And the prices are quite reasonable.

Styles and capacities are hugely varied. Revolvers come in standard six-shooter capacity, but semi- and full-auto magazines cover the gamut. (Sorry, but I can’t bring myself to call them ‘clips’ like the site does.) Single-width magazines are available in 5, 6, 7, and 8 round capacities. Staggered magazines come with 9, 10, 11, 12, or 13 rounds. Double-width magazines are available in 15, 17, 20, 30, and 32 round versions. Shotguns come in the cute little double-barrel version, as well as 4, 5, 6, and 7 shot street-sweeper models, and even a 5 shot revolver and a brutal 12 shot Gatling model. A twelve-shot revolver/rifle, the oddball nine-plus-shotgun LeMat (yes, it’s real), and the monster 50 round Tommy Gun drum magazine round out the selection. All of these represent real-world magazine capacities.

Some of the models from my collection, and the weapons they may represent. Left to right, 8 round single-stack (Colt 1911), 6 round revolver (S&W .357 Mag), 17 round double-stack (Glock 17), 30 round double-stack (M16), and double-barrel shotgun.

As you can see above, AmmoCounters come filled with unfired and unprimed .38 Super brass, except for the shotgun models, which use the brass portion of a once-fired 12 gauge shell (high-brass, for those in the know). I haven’t tried it yet, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to use .38 Special or even .357 Magnum brass for the revolvers. Extra brass is available from online stores like Midway or Cabela’s. (There are no restrictions on the shipping of brass, although it may raise a few eyebrows.)

To use the counters, just pull out the brass as your character shoots, and reload as necessary. As Patrick, Phil, and I discussed when using these in (of course) a zombie game, a communal catchbasin would be handy. As the brass is dropped into the ‘discard bowl’, the distinctive ‘tink-tink’ will definitely add to the immersion factor.

For a game like Deadlands, a small spitoon would be perfect to catch the brass as shots are fired. More modern games might use a cut-down artillery shell or a small ammo box, but the effect is the same: Dropping one shell is taking a shot, and a few shells is a quick burst, but the spincter-clenching brass rain of a full-auto magazine emptying will really get your attention.

Have you used AmmoCounters, or anything similar? Got a question or comment? Sound off and let us know!

It’s also an “avatar game,” an RPG in which you play a character based on yourself (though you can, of course, also play any kind of character you like), which presents some unique challenges and opportunities from a GMing perspective. So I wrote to the publisher and asked for a print review copy, which I tucked into right away.

So how is it? Here’s the short version: It’s got some flaws, but if you like zombies and want to try a different kind of RPG, you’ll love Outbreak: Undead.

Let’s Get Physical

Outbreak: Undead looks great. It’s a monster hardcover, 452 pages, with a full-color cover and a B&W interior. The cover art depicts a woman in two states, uninfected and zombie, with a polaroid showing her as a zombie with a note on it: “She is still pretty to me.” It’s printed on heavy, high-quality paper, and it looks and feels nice. It’s $45, which is about right these days.

The whole book is presented as if it were a survivor’s journal found after the zombie apocalypse: The background for every page is a lined page from a spiral-bound notebook, and the pages are plastered with sticky notes, taped-on bits of paper, polaroids, and sketches. It’s a slick, immersive presentation that really sets the tone for the book.

The photos are actual photos of scenes that, for the most part, fit the subject matter: empty parking lots, abandoned buildings, blurry people as zombies, shots of weapons, etc.

The sketches are almost uniformly awful, but I think they’re supposed to be — in the context of a zombie survival manual cobbled together in a post-zombie-apocalypse world, they look like what a non-artist would sketch to illustrate the stuff they’re writing about.

Unfortunately, OU uses a handwriting font throughout, interspersed periodically with typewritten text. This was cool for the first few pages, but became grit-my-teeth annoying by the end of the book — handwriting fonts aren’t as easy to read or as conducive to the kind of clarity you need from an RPG rulebook as plain text. (It also means that while this is a ginormous hardcover, there’s a lot less text per page than you might expect, which isn’t necessarily good or bad.)

Organization

OU is broken into 10 chapters: About, Characters, Skills + Traits, The Turn, Zombies, Combat, Vehicles, Equipment, Gamemaster’s Section, and Glossary. It lacks an index, which in a book this large is a huge oversight and a crying shame.

After spending some time with the book, I found it annoying to navigate because of the lack of differentiation between sections within chapters. There are no page-level headers to help you orient yourself within a chapter, so I always found that it took longer to locate specific things than it should have.

Trying to look up specific things is equally aggravating. For example, I wanted to look up how to make a skill check, which isn’t covered in the Skills section. It’s at the front of the book in an unlabeled sidebar in the About chapter, which explains that checks are all based on statistics and are impacted by Difficulties, and it took me several minutes to find. If there were an index, I would have found it right away.

I get the impression that graphic design and staying true to the “survivor’s journal” theme were prioritized over creating a usable, well-organized RPG book. The saving grace is that the system isn’t terribly complicated, so once you’ve looked something up once it shouldn’t be too hard to remember. Still, the end result is a book that’s pretty annoying to read and somewhat annoying to reference.

Braaaaaaiiiiinnnnnssss

Now that you know what OU looks like and how it’s set up, let’s talk specifics:

I want to play me!

Although OU pitches playing a character based on yourself right up front (“avatar play”), the book doesn’t actually include all of the rules for playing yourself. It’s not until page 28 that OU mentions that you need to go to the game’s website to generate a character based on yourself. What the book does include is the rules for creating a template character, IE a normal PC that isn’t based on you.

This is pretty annoying, since one of the selling points on the back cover and in the early pages of the book as that you can create a character based on yourself. Not including those rules feels like a bait-and-switch. That said, the avatar creation system is free, and offering it online has the advantage of letting your players start their avatar characters without needing to own the book.

SPEW-AI

Okay, so how does avatar PC generation work? You go to the game’s website, click on “SPEW-AI,” and take a test designed to measure your physical and psychological capabilities: SPEW-AI, which stands for “Strength – Perception – Empathy – Will Assessment Inventory.” You then answer multiple-choice questions like this one (the first):

Think of exercises that involve being flexible (yoga, rock climbing, etc.) and think of how your flexibility compares to the average person. Which of the following describes you?

Which is followed by five options ranging from “I’m a contortionist” (A) to “I’m not flexible at all” (E). The whole test is 40 questions, took me about five minutes, and is fascinating. Why? Because it’s stated aim is realism: From the introduction to OU: “The purpose of this game is to create a simulation that can quantify and allow for an accurate representation of a person’s ability to survive any possible Outbreak scenario.” (More on the “simulation” thing later.)

When you finish the test, it spits out just four stats: Strength, Perception, Empathy, and Will. The range runs from 5-46+, “weak” to “Olympian.” My stats came out as 15 Strength (low average), 22 Perception (average), 28 Empathy (average), 26 Will (average). IE, tubby zombie bait — which, if I’m being honest, is probably about right. Interestingly, that’s just 91 points — whereas template characters get 120. So clearly my goal should be to get myself killed ASAP so I can stat up a muscular cop with heroic levels of empathy…

So why isn’t this test in the book? I’m not sure why, because it’s not that long, wouldn’t take up much space, and appears to just be assigning points based on your answers — something easily accomplished with a breakdown familiar to every Cosmo reader (ahem). If I’m overlooking some complex element, I don’t know what it is.

The SPEW-AI test is neat, fun to take (if depressing, which is appropriate for a zombie survival horror game!), and unique, but it should be in the book.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me

OK, so I have my stats; now I turn to the “Characters based on Players” section in chapter two, where the game tells me that I can pick a Type (basically a class, like Lawyer, Nurse, or Firefighter, should I happen to be any of those things in real life) or create a Type based uniquely on me. For the latter, the primary draw of the game, I’m told to turn to the section “Yourself as a character”…which doesn’t exist.

No, really.

And on top of that, I’m told that the SPEW-AI test should have generated a recommended skill set for me, which it didn’t — all I got was my stats. At this point, I’m kind of screwed; I have no choice but to wing it, since one of the core elements of the game simply doesn’t exist. I had to triple-check this, since I just couldn’t believe it.

So can I wing it? Sure. The Characters chapter tells me that characters get five Tiers of Skills, which can be sacrificed at a ratio of 1 Tier:5 stat points if I like, and that if I instead pick a Type from the book I get no stat bonuses, two Skill Tiers, and whatever non-stat bonuses are provided by that Type. Plus Gestalt Dice, which are a mechanic unto themselves (more on that later).

But if I’m new to gaming, I’m flipping around not finding what the book tells me should be there and going “What the fuck?!” at this point. Super-lame.

The core mechanic

Moving on, let’s peek under the hood at the game system. The core mechanic is percentile-based, with standard checks being made against your SPEW stat + any bonuses from skills or equipment, roll equal to or under to succeed. For every full 10 below the needed value, you achieve an extra degree of success; ditto for degrees of failure in the opposite direction.

If a check has a higher-than-normal difficulty, that’s applied as a penalty to your stat in 5% increments before you roll. So if you have a Strength + climbing gear bonus total of 40% for a check, but the climb is Difficulty 2, you now have a 30% and need to roll 30 or less to succeed.

This is a simple core mechanic that I suspect would get out of the way and let you focus on the game in actual play, just like it does in other percentile-based games I’ve played.

Mad zombie survival skills

Skills are broken out by Tier, with Tiers representing the amount of training you need to have a basic level of proficiency. There are several dozen skills, and they’re pretty oddball: Agility (1st Tier) gets you a bonus to some skills and checks, while Caged Wisdom (3rd Tier) lets you make shivs because you’ve been to prison, and Sniper (5th Tier) means you’re a trained sniper.

The skills are really a mix of what most RPGs would call two different things: skills and advantages (or traits, or feats, or whatever), with skills letting you do specific things and advantages giving you bonuses. It’s a bit quirky, but it’s workable and gives the game a unique flavor. It also emphasizes that the focus of OU is different than most RPGs.

Those bonuses are important because they’re added to your base stat when you make tests. For example, Agility gives me a +5% bonus to Strength for climbing and jumping, which, with my 15 Strength, would be pretty important. (Unfortunately, I can’t take Agility because my Strength isn’t high enough — unless I pick a Type that grants Agility as a bonus skill, which overrides that prerequisite.)

Gestalt Dice

Gestalt Dice are part of the skill system: If you’re playing an avatar character, you get one Gestalt Die for every year of your age, which represents the fact that the full range of human abilities and specialties can’t be represented by any skill list. (Template characters get them too, but they work a bit differently.)

When making a check, you can add Gestalt Dice to the result (how many depends on your years of experience in that skill). You roll that many six-sided dice, add that number — and that bonus is permanent. So If I’m making a Str – Endurance check and I add Gestalt Dice to the roll, the bonus granted by those dice applies to all future Str – Endurance checks as well. This permanently reduces your Gestalt Dice pool.

This is a neat system that’s unlike any I’ve seen before. Self-applied bonuses aren’t uncommon, but the permanency aspect is new to me. I love this idea, and it introduces a neat fun factor into what’s otherwise a pretty grim game — particularly because the average schlub (like me) is going to have fairly shitty stats to start out with.

Zombies!

As you might expect, the chapter on zombies is lovingly detailed. It opens with the immutable and mutable laws of zombies (immutable: there’s no cure; mutable: only zombie-inflicted wounds transmit the infection), and then provides a solid overview of zombies in general, rules for zombie perception and movement, and zombie traits.

OU also covers zombie priorities, which fits well with the simulation aspect. Zombies choose their targets in this order: closest, in plain sight, downwind, least infected. Properly enforced, that list will keep you, the GM, on the path to a brutal zombie survival experience — and your players will know it.

The bulk of this chapter is taken up by templates for different zombie types. Each includes stats, a description, special traits, and an illustration or photo. More or less every kind of zombie you’ve ever seen in a movie, comic, book, or game is statted out here, from banshees and titans (Left 4 Dead’s spitters and tanks, more or less) to standard zombies to zombified dogs (Resident Evil) and zombie kids.

This chapter is every bit as good as it should be. If you think a game where you fight zombies 90% of the time would be boring, this chapter will convince you otherwise. There are so many kinds of zombies, special traits, and things you can tweak to surprise your players that you’ll be set for a nice long stretch of play.

The turn

Chapter four, “The Turn,” is where OU’s divergence from traditional RPGs starts to become clearer. Turns are five seconds long and include six phases: surprise, intent, check, resolution, grapple, damage. The wrinkle is that second phase, intent: You go around the table and everyone declares what they’re going to do, then you resolve their actions in the next phase; resolution is simultaneous. Conversation among players is encouraged, and you can change your mind freely until the next phase.

Once you’re locked into a course of action, though, that’s that for that turn. If circumstances change in phase three (resolution), your action could be irrelevant and wind up being wasted. On the flipside, everything happening simultaneously makes it easy to team up against zombies.

This seems like a mechanic designed for maximum realism: In real life, things sometimes happen too fast for you to adjust on the fly. But will it be fun? If you’re in the right mindset to play a zombie outbreak simulator RPG, I think so.

I think of it like the original Resident Evil games, which used absolute controls and a relative camera: up was always forwards, but halfway down a hall the camera would flip to the opposite view — so now pushing forwards meant you were running back towards the zombies. Rather than being bad design, this was deliberate; it nicely represented the fact that in real life, you’d get scared and fuck up periodically.

Combat

Your character’s health is derived from your Strength (+1 per point) and Will (+1 per five points). A standard zombie does 1d6 damage with its bite; an average pistol does 2d6. Degrees of success multiply the number of dice rolled: two degrees = double dice, etc. Zombie bait like me (15 Strength, 26 Will) would get 20 Health.

Damage also inflicts wounds, ranging from zombie infection to internal injuries, and both characters and zombies can be killed outright with a single good blow. For characters, that’s a hit that causes 31+ points of damage; for zombies, it’s a percentage threshold representing headshots and the like.

Combat is pretty straightforward: turns proceed as described above, with all damage being applied simultaneously. Zombies are rarely encountered alone, and that plus their special abilities makes them deadly. Zombie bites can infect characters, too, and pain from your wounds plays a role.

Healing is slow and difficult. First aid restores Health, but it’s based on degrees of success, not a simple roll. And natural healing takes a long time, modified by your activity level and how sanitary the conditions are.

Overall, combat in OU leans towards realism, though it’s not overly crunchy (unusual for a realistic combat system). There are specialized rules for automatic weapons fire, grappling (which zombies do a lot), teaming up, and other situations, but no real surprises.

Your chances of surviving a single gunshot wound or zombie bite are quite good, but healing from those wounds can be difficult — and, of course, you’ll rarely be in a situation to get shot or bitten just once. On top of that, with degrees of success modifying damage rolls, any damage can potentially inflict serious wounds or even kill you outright.

On balance, OU is a deliberately deadly game.

OK, what’s with all the “simulation” stuff?

It can be a subtle distinction at times, but Outbreak: Undead is explicitly a zombie outbreak survival simulator, not a traditional RPG. It’s also an RPG, but one that’s colored by its goal of realistically assessing both your moment-to-moment survival and your overall ability to survive a zombie outbreak.

This is why, for example, your baseline stats aren’t so hot. With a 15 Strength, my avatar character sucks at climbing or lifting things when it matters — without bonuses or Gestalt Dice, I’m going to fail a lot. Similarly, it’s why Health is a precious resource that’s easy to lose and hard to recover.

It’s also why there are some interesting programmatic elements in OU — for example, the game is designed to be played out in missions, with victory conditions for every mission. This isn’t fundamentally different from most RPGs, where every adventure has a successful/failed outcome, but it’s made explicit in OU through subsystems to determine random encounters, by the mechanics for each mission type, and more.

The simulator aspect of OU also means that it’s more focused than other similar games. Take Eden Studios’ All Flesh Must Be Eaten: It’s a much more freewheeling, traditional RPG, with sourcebooks for zombie pirates and zombies in space. By contrast, OU uses the modern world and, by default, your actual players as characters — that provides a lot of focus right out of the gate.

Encounter Checks

Let’s dig into Encounter Checks as a good example of the simulation aspect of OU. Because the world is swarming with zombies, as well as sparsely populated with panicked humans, resilient survivors, and vigilante bastards who want to take your stuff, OU uses a random encounter system to generate a constant sense of danger and ramp up the tension. This is nifty, and I think it will really set the proper tone during play. It also funnels the game into the simulation it’s designed to be — here’s why.

You, the GM, make an Encounter Check whenever one of five things happens:

1. The characters move for one unit of Time or look for a place to rest
2. The PCs search
3. After a certain number of turns during an encounter (so zombie “adds” become a real threat)
4. The characters make a survival check or rest
5. The PCs flee an encounter at a dead sprint

Taking that first condition as an example, if the party moves at a normal walking pace, you make an Encounter Check once per mile. The check is rolled against the senses of the zombies in the area; for standard zombies that’s 30% (because they can see and hear, 15% each). So after a mile, you roll d100 and on a 30 or less, the PCs run into zombies (or survivors, vigilantes, etc. — but it’s usually zombies); on a 31+, no encounter. The number of zombies is also dependent on a formula.

Are you free to ignore that? Sure thing, just like any aspect of any RPG — but played as written, Encounter Checks set the pace of a game of OU, and that pace is likely to be pretty brutal. After running into a few random packs of zombies, with each bite potentially resulting in one of the PCs becoming a zombie, your group is going to start focusing on finding shelter, fortifying their shelter, etc. pretty damned quick.

In other words, the programmatic elements of OU, especially Encounter Checks, will automatically populate your game with all of the elements of a good zombie movie, will create palpable tension, and will “funnel” your players into doing the kinds of things real people would do in a zombie outbreak.

I usually hate random encounters, but I think this is fucking awesome — it’s perfectly matched to what OU wants to be, and it should happen organically during play. Among the many things that make me want to play OU, this is at the top of the list.

Mission structure

To run OU, you need to determine the outbreak scenario. As the GM, you sit down and determine the type of outbreak, whether the game will start from the first infection or pick up mid-outbreak, what kinds of zombies are involved, what traits and unique properties those zombies have, and whether the goal is survival or stopping the outbreak.

In a nutshell, that’s your campaign. It’s a pretty straightforward process, but one that offers a significant amount of variety. Combined with fairly quick and dirty character creation, this makes OU simpler to pick up and play than the size of the rulebook suggests.

Once you have the world and the zombies all sorted out, you’re ready to run some missions. Each mission type includes a short description, prerequisites (having a stronghold, for example), the objective, how much Time it will take (which influences the number of Encounter Checks), conditions of success and failure, and special stuff (rules, conditions, whatever).

The first mission is a good example: All-out Defense. In this mission zombies are attacking your stronghold, which can be determined by the GM or programmatically by having zombies trailing the PCs after another mission roll higher than the stronghold’s level. The objective is to eradicate all the zombies, which is made more difficult because the population of your stronghold can’t move freely without PC escorts.

The characters get 10d10 rounds to succeed, and if they don’t succeed they have to flee — abandoning the stronghold in the process. There are a few special rules for this mission, including rolling for the time of the attack and a roll to determine if characters begin the mission in Panic (a state that has mechanical consequences).

All of that takes up less than three pages, and all you need to add is a map. Google up some floor plans, doodle a strategic-level map for your players, and you’re off and running. Provided you created the circumstances of the outbreak in advance, you could play this mission at the drop of a hat, which is handy.

On the flipside, this type of formal structure can make some players feel stifled. Provided you set expectations upfront, including an emphasis on the simulator aspect of OU and what makes that so much fun, this shouldn’t be a huge hurdle for most groups.

Not much GMing advice

On the one hand, you don’t actually need that much GMing advice to run OU. Setting it in the modern world, with your players as the PCs, and having systems to programmatically address many aspects of gameplay means that you’re free to focus on improvisation, atmosphere, and other GMing details.

On the other hand, having your players as PCs is unusual, given that most modern RPGs don’t attempt this, and an overview of how that works in practice would have been useful. Similarly, even though OU strives for realism, it’s still an RPG at the end of the day — help me out with some advice on enhancing the tension, setting the right mood, etc.

I can see the decision-making process with regard to avatar characters and the lack of GMing advice revolving around the fact that no one needs advice on playing themselves, and GMs shouldn’t need advice on dealing with PCs who are in fact their friends, but as a GM I would have appreciated some guidance.

Cool little details

OU is full of nifty details that make it clear how much effort and TLC went into making this game the best possible “death by zombies while the world falls apart around you simulator” around.

For example, every character has a bite resist stat (half your Perception + armor/clothing + skills), which is the chance that a given zombie bite will raise your infection level. And every shot you take at a zombie has a chance of killing it outright (Ranged Attack + weapon lethality modified by zombie protection) — headshots!

I also love that noise attracts zombies, with consideration given to whether it’s instantaneous noise (a gunshot) or sustained noise (a chainsaw…), all matched up against the zombie perception subsystem. OU is packed with these kinds of details, and they really make it shine.

Should I buy it?

Assuming your group wouldn’t be turned off by the simulator aspect of Outbreak: Undead, yes.

The lack of organization and the annoyance of the handwriting font are more than offset by everything else about OU, from the badass zombie chapter to the Encounter Check system, simulation elements, and the level of detail and thought that went into creating what’s ultimately a very cool zombie horror RPG.

It’s a testament to just how cool this game is that even though it fails to include complete rules for creating yourself as a character — one of its biggest selling points! — I still recommend buying it. Was I pissed to find that out? Yep — but the rest of the game made up for it.

Outbreak: Undead is different from most RPGs (closer in some respects to an indie RPG than to, say, D&D), but I found those differences to be pretty nifty overall. I’d love to play this game with my group, and it seems like it would shine in the convention event format, with its tight scenarios, low prep time, and the sexy, easy-to-describe hook: “It’s a zombie survival horror game where you play yourself as a character.”

Questions welcome

As always, I’m happy to answer questions in the comment, and feedback is welcome! Even at over 4,000 words, there was no way to cover everything I could have covered about OU, so if I missed something you were curious about just let me know.

Update: One of the folks behind OU, Ivan Van Norman, emailed me this (thanks, Ivan!):

Outbreak: Undead developer here… Must say, thanks for such an honest review. We appreciate your candor with both our strengths and weaknesses, Martin.

In regards to a couple of of specific questions raised: yes, we are having a PDF available soon (slated for late November) and it will be revised based on the Q&A of our awesome forum members and the extremely insightful reviews such as this one. A complete errata will be available for free on our site, so those who own the book will benefit from the revision as well.

This revision will contain an index. The initial lack of an index was not a style choice, nor was it an oversight… It was unfortunately a sacrificial lamb to the dark deadline gods in order that we meet our GenCon release date.

In regards to the missing ‘Yourself as a Character’ section, that was a glaring oversight in the regard that we deleted the header and moved the contents without realizing that the section itself was still being referenced. What would comprise the “Yourself as a Character” section was distilled into the content at the top of pg. 29 and expanded in the Gestalt Dice section in the Skills chapter. So the content is still in the book, it is just improperly labeled. This is obviously addressed in the revision.

In regards to the SPEW-AI: it is a test that is still in its infancy and, at best, a blunt psychological testing instrument. Its exclusion from the book was so that each improvement we make would not require a re-print of the entire 456 page core rulebook. Such scheduled improvements include the recommended skill set (a feature that we had hoped to have implemented before our release, hence its inclusion in the body copy of our book), built-in lie factors, an expanded question set and gender/age-factored questions. Although, we’re focused more on smoothing out our game mechanics, this test remains a very high priority of ours and demands more than the passing attention we have been able to give it. We would actually feel morally remiss if we didn’t approach this subject seriously. Involving actual player avatars requires that we do our best for honest portrayal especially when the in-game lifespan can be so brutally short. For this reason, the SPEW-AI will never be complete, as it will be improved upon and revised with the passage of time.

We also put out free content each month that we try to make a combination of new material and GM tips that we provide to our community, so we don’t like leaving people in the dark… We know we’re a brand new game and we are generating material accordingly. Anyway, this has gone on long enough. We really do appreciate such an honest review. Thanks again. Take care and prepare.

This is a review of Version 1.03. As the back of the book indicates, this is a “living document” and may be updated as resources change, etc.

Johnn emailed me and asked if I’d like to review Filling the Empty Chair, which he thought it might interest Gnome Stew readers, and I agreed that folks would enjoy hearing about it — it’s hard to be a GM without any players, after all! I received a complimentary copy to review, and I was excited to take a peek at it.

Finding players is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart, and I’ve been a fan of Johnn’s work for over a decade — the Roleplaying Tips newsletter has been online since 1999, practically forever in Internet time.

Gaming is the heart of my social life. If you’re more in the “take it or leave it” camp when it comes to gaming regularly, then the pressure’s off for finding players — you find them or you don’t, and life moves on. But we all know what it’s like to move to new city, graduate, change jobs, or otherwise suddenly find yourself with a desperate itch to game and no group to game with.

If that sounds like you, then read on to find out how Filling the Empty Chair can help you meet some new players.

Overview

Filling the Empty Chair is a 30-page landscape-format PDF that retails for $7. Minus the cover, intro, and a page about how to get free updates to the book, you get 27 pages of resources and advice for finding players. This is divided into three sections: online resources, tips and advice, and writing your gamer profile.

The cover, done in a cartoon style, is simple and eye-catching; I dig it. It’s also the only art in the book, excluding website logos. The layout is plain, with two columns in the resource section and a single column elsewhere. It’s designed for screen reading, and it gets out of the way and lets you read without any distractions.

The text is clean as well, with no obvious typos or grammatical issues. It’s a light, pleasant read, and is well-matched to the topic: simple, practical, and straightforward. There’s a good overview of the book on its product page, but no sample; that’s a downside for me, as a sample can be a real indicator of what you’re going to get out of a product.

For $7, though, I expect better production values across the board — this looks like a Microsoft Word file. As a publisher, I have a bit of a bias in this department, but the way this book looks would annoy me as a consumer, too.

The Resources

The first 11 pages offer up a list of gamer-finding websites and forums, 39 in all. The Yahoo! Groups entry includes 20 individual groups, so there are 58 resources if you count each of those separately.

Johnn has loosely ranked the resources from best to worst, and having used many of these resources myself the order is a pretty accurate reflection of my own experience. (Yours will vary, of course, as there’s a fair amount of luck in any player-finding venture.)

He also provides a short profile for each resource, including the hyperlinked URL, game types (tabletop, PbEM), game systems, dominant regions, format (forum, website), and a short write-up. Here’s the entry for NearbyGamers, one of my personal favorite player-finding resources:

http://nearbygamers.com/
Game types: tabletop, PBeM, forum, virtual
Game systems: various
Dominant regions: global
Format: registry, profile

This excellent site lets you zoom into your region on a map to see who has registered nearby. You can also find local gamers by game system. Be sure to add your profile.

This section of the book consolidates a lot of information into a relatively small space, and saves you the trouble of tracking it all down yourself. You could sit down, spend a couple of hours signing up and posting in as many of these places as possible, and cast a nice wide net for players without a huge time investment.

With Johnn’s list, I don’t have to waste my time checking out the Wizards RPG Gamer Classifieds if I’m running a virtual game, because according to the “Game types” section for that entry, they only deal with tabletop games. Nor do I have to wade through the chaff to find the wheat, because the wheat is right at the top of the list.

On the flipside, you can find all this info yourself online for free, provided you have the time to do so — a little Google searching will turn up the top resources in Johnn’s list. For me, the value is in the consolidation.

I do wish that each entry covered a bit more ground, though. For example, how many people use NearbyGamers? And why is it ranked so highly in Filling the Empty Chair? Knowing that would help me decide if it’s worth my time to create a profile there. The quick overview is nice, but if I’m investing some time to find a player I’d prefer to have more information at hand.

Player-Finding Advice

The next 12 pages are devoted to providing 28 specific pieces of gamer-finding advice, ranging from “Get a Business Card” (#1) to “Check Dating Sites” (#28). This section is a mixed bag, with some excellent advice and some tips that need expansion. It’s also a bit hard to evauluate because there are so many variables involved in in looking for players — my experience may be totally different from yours, and color my opinion of a particular tip accordingly.

For example, #2 is “Advertise in Stores,” something I’ve done on a few occasions over the years with zero luck. Responses have ranged from weird and creepy to just crickets — in my experience, this is one of the worst ways to find players around, and doesn’t rate being second on the list or getting a more in-depth treatment than some of the other entries.

But there’s also a lot of good advice in this section, including some real gems. One of my favorites is #18, “Get a T-shirt,” which recommends custom-printing a “gamers wanted” T-shirt for guerilla recruiting.

I was once stopped on the street by an Amber player who wanted to recruit me solely because I was wearing a T-shirt with an Amber quote on it. Had I not been moving out of the state a few days from then, I would likely have met some great folks just because I wore a geeky shirt. It never occurred to me to do this on purpose, and it’s a great idea.

This section also does a good job of speaking to gamers at a variety of points in their lives. For example, tip #22 is “Start a Club at School,” which won’t apply to someone outside of high school or college, but is a fantastic way to meet and recruit gamers in both of those places.

In general, though, this section could benefit from more information in almost every case. Take an entry like #20, “Create a Gaming Blog”: This entry is a short paragraph and a link to WordPress.com. With the wealth of info Johnn has on hand by way of Roleplaying Tips, which is put to good use for some entries, there’s plenty of room to expand on this meaty topic.

The Perfect Profile

The final four-page section covers writing the perfect profile — dating advice for gamers, essentially. Many player-finding sites require a profile of some sort, and it’s not always easy to know what to write and what not to write; Filling the Empty Chair covers both aspects of this process very well.

This section offers simple, cogent advice on building a good RPG profile and avoiding common pitfalls — things like listing every game you’re willing to play, something that prompts a more or less instant “Thanks, but no thanks” from my group.

It’s a good way to finish off the book, and not a topic I’ve seen covered anywhere else.

Value for the Money

Filling the Empty Chair is the most comprehensive resource of its kind, but on balance it’s not comprehensive enough to justify its price tag. It either needs more content and better layout or a lower price tag that matches its size and production values.

Weighing Filling the Empty Chair against other PDFs in the same price range, it comes up lacking. While $7 isn’t a lot of money, 30 pages (27 of actual content) for $7 with no art and low production values isn’t a good deal.

Like any gaming book, though, things get fuzzy when you consider the value of the content. If this book helps you find an awesome new player, it’s worth a lot more than $7. But considered solely on its own merits, it’s not worth $7.

Should I Buy It?

Whether it’s worth buying will largely depend on your situation: If you’re short on time, new to gaming or new to looking for players, just moved to a new city and don’t know anyone, or have always had back luck meeting players, picking up Filling the Empty Chair will save you some time and potential heartache.

In particular, if you’ve never tried finding a new player before, this book will give you a good idea of how to go about it, where to look, and what not to do — it’s perfect for your situation.

If none of the above applies to you, though, you’re likely to be disappointed by this book’s appearance and by the amount of content that it provides (and that may be true if even the above does apply).

Questions?

If you have questions about Filling the Empty Chair, I’d be happy to answer them — fire away in the comments!