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27 March, 2015

More Characters for Atomic Robo, WWII Edition

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Some of the characters done up for the WWII flashbacks for the upcoming campaign…

Captain John Nolan, USAR

Nolan commands a small team of “action scientists” in Echo Company, of the Strategic Science Division of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Much of E Co.’s work had been in Europe, but with the Germans out of the fight, they find themselves facing the notorious Japanese Unit 723 and their Division X!

Concept Aspect: Combat Engineer; Omega Aspect: When all this is over…

MODES — Soldier +3: Notice +5, Athletics, Combat, Physique, Tactics, Vehicles, Will +4; Aspect: Violence First, Science Later

Science! +2: Civil Engineer, Mechanical Engineer +3; Aspect: Been on some big projects…

Action +1; Aspect: From a Tough Neighborhood

STUNTS: Battlefield Commander: Any of his team that can hear his order gain +2 when put in harm’s way; Remember your Training: Get +3 when invoking enemy’s aspect or complications; This is My Rifle: +2 to combat with military weapons; This is my Gun (Thompson .45): Weapon 2; Shake It Off!: 1/scene, check two physical stress boxes and add values; soak this number of shifts physical harm.

STRESSES: Physical: 4, Mental: 3

Lieutenant Sebastian Koch, USAR

Concept Aspect: Enthusiastic New Guy; Omega Aspect: Is that a German Accent?

MODES — Science! +3: Biology, Will +5, Chemistry, Notice, Zoology +4; Aspect: ABD, Scrips Institute

Action +2: Athletics, Provoke +3; Aspect Family Escaped the Nazis in ’38

Banter +1; Well-Educated

STUNTS: Charismatic: Use Will for a Banter skill to overcome in social conflict; Chicago Typewriter: +1 combat with the weapon, Weapon 1; Grew Up Around Boats: +2 Vehicle to create/overcome aspect with boats in a chase; Publish or Perish: Gains +3 when using a brainstorm aspect he created; Widely Read: Fate point to use Will for a science skill for one scene.

STRESSES: Physical: 3, Mental: 3

Lieutenant Reed Smith, USN

The young and handsome commander of a PT boat put at the SSD’s disposal.

Concept Aspect: PT Boat Commander; Omega Aspect: First Heroics, Then Politics!

MODES — Officer +3: Athletics, Combat, Contacts, Notice, Physique, Vehicles, Will +4; Aspect: Sailed the America’s Cup

Banter +2: Provoke +3; Aspect: Rhode Island Royalty

Action +1; Played Football for Yale

STUNTS: Just a Little Chop: +2 Vehicles to overcome in bad weather; Passionate Orator: Use Will for Banter skill when addressing a large group; She’ll Hold together: Any vehicle he pilots gains an Armor 2; Skull & Bones: When in a new place, Contacts v. +4 to create a contact-based aspect. Can trade a free invoke for a second aspect;

MEGA-STUNT — PT-111 (“Trip Aces”): Function: PT Boat; Flaw; Limited Range; Aspects: Torpedo Boat — Weapon 4; Weapon 5 at a cost; Fast B*@#$: +2 to overcome with a vehicle in a chase.

STRESSES:  Physical: 4, Mental: 4

AMM3 Leslie Rook, WAVES

Concept Aspect: Ms. Fix-It; Omega Aspect: Just as good as a man!

MODES — Gearhead +3: Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering +5, Electrical Engineering, Vehicles, Will +4; Aspect: Machines are Easy, People are Hard!

Banter +2: Provoke +3; Sugar & Spice, and Everything Documented

Action +1; Mean Right Hook.

STUNTS: Chewing Gum & Bailing Wire: Fate point reduces vehicle consequence 1 step for  one scene, but consequence increases two steps after until recovery; Improvisational Genius: 1 free benie on create/modify an invention or vehicle; Girls Talk: When in a new post, Contacts v. +4 to have a contact-based aspect, can trade free invoke for a second aspect; She’ll Hold Together: Any vehicle she worked or works on has an Armor 2; Tool Kit: +1 to create/overcome with engineering.

STRESSES: Physical: 2, Mental: 3

 

23 March, 2015

Some Characters for Atomic Robo RPG

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So I’ve been prepping up an Atomic Robo game over the last few months, but really threw myself into it a few weeks ago when it was obvious that our Battlestar Galactica campaign was coming to a close. I wanted to emulate the flashbacks-tied-to-modern-story flavor of the comic…but without using Robo, so I decided to do up characters for each of the decades between the 1930s and today. The modern group is working for the following faction:

Office of Scientific Intelligence, a DoD operation that was spun out of a superscience group under the US Army Corps of Engineers during WWII.

Mission Statement: On the forefront of science!   Mode: Fair (+2); Resources (Intel +4, R&D+3)

The team leader:

Agent Craig Scott

Concept Aspect: Smooth Operator; Omega Aspect: Getting too old for this…

MODES: Secret Agent +3 — Contacts, Deceive +5, Burglary, Notice, Stealth, Vehicles +4; Aspect: Keeping the World Safe…Quietly.

Banter +2 — Rapport, Will +3; Aspect: I can talk myself into trouble, then out in a sentence…

Intrigue +1; Aspect: I used to be good at this…

STUNTS: (1 open)

Cover Story: Use deceive to defend against mental attacks during interrogation.; Director’s Personal Number: When in a new city/country/etc., Contacts v. +4 to gain an aspect from the contact with a free invoke. Can trade the free invoke for a 2nd aspect.; Service Weapon (SIG-Sauer P228): +1 combat with the weapon, Weapon 1.; Trained Assassin: Use stealth for physical combat when the target is unaware of you.

Stresses — Physical: 2, Mental: 5

Dr. Rafael “Rafe” Marquez

Concept Aspect: Hunky Doctor; Omega Aspect: Knowledge is its own reward.

MODES: Science! +3 — Genetics, Medicine +5, Notice, Will: +4; Aspect: Johns Hopkins…’nuf said.

Action +2 — Athletics +3; Aspect: Weekend Fitness Nut

Banter +1; Aspect: I do okay…

STUNTS: 1 open

Feel the Burn: 1/issue, take a consequence to add that value to a physical test; Medical Bag: +1 to step back a consequence with Medicine skill; One Raised Eyebrow: +2 empathy to defeat lies; Publish or Perish: Can invoke a brainstorm he created at +3

STRESSES — Physical: 3, Mental: 4

Dr. Paul Koch

Concept Aspect: Underestimated Genius; Omega Aspect: Truth is stranger than we know.

MODES: Science! +3 — Biochemistry, Cryptobiology, Notice +5; Aspect: Thin Line between science fact and science fiction

Action +2; Aspect: Being a hero is tough…

Intrigue +1; Aspect: Secrets are hard…

STUNTS: 1 open

Red Eye Radio: When gaining an aspect from a contact, invoke is free or can exchange a free invoke for an extra aspect.; Shake It Off: 1/scene, can check to physical stress boxes and add the values, then absorb that many shifts of damage; Synergy: with a Fate Point, use Notice for any science skill for 1 scene; Publish or Perish: When invoking a brainstorm aspect he created, get +3.

Agent James Crille

Concept Aspect; Action Engineering!; Omega Aspect: In it for the fun.

MODES: Martial Artist +3 — Notice +5, Athletics, Combat, Physique, Will +4; Aspect: At one with the violence.

Science! +2 — Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering +4; Aspect: Right tool for the right job.

Action +1; Aspect: Parkour, bitches!

STUNTS:

Feel the Burn: 1/issue, take a consequence to add that value to a physical test; Multi-tool: +1 to create/overcome with engineering; Numbers Cruncher: With a Fate Point, use Will for a cience skill for 1 scene; Parkour: +1 to create/overcome aspect with Athletics; Shake It Off: 1/scene, check two physical stress boxes and add values then absorb that number of shifts of damage.

STRESSES — Physical: 4, Mental: 3

Agent Mala Kapoor

Concept Aspect: Tech Industry Refugee; Omega Aspect: My gender shouldn’t matter!

MODES: Science! +3 — Cybernetics, Robotics +5, Notice, Will +4; Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Intrigue +2 — Contacts, Deceive +3; Aspect: I survived tech sector politics.

Banter +1 — Rapport +2; Forgiveness is easier than permission.

STUNTS:

I’m In!: 1 fate point to use computer science instead of burglary for one scene; Laptop of Doom!: +1 create/overcome aspect with computer science; Numbers Cruncher: 1 fate point to use Will for a science skill for one scene; Publish or Perish: When using a brainstorm asepct she created, gain +3; The Girls’ Club: In a new city, country, etc. Contacts v. +4 to gain a contact-based aspect with free invoke. Can trade free invoke for a second aspect.

STRESSES — Physical: 3, Mental: 4

 

11 March, 2015

Play Report: Wild Talents

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This weekend we finally got around to playing Wild Talents, a superhero game that uses the “One Roll Engine” and here’s the basic impressions I came away with:

1) The intention seems to be to make the mechanics very quick and streamlined…it can play that way, but I think you have to have played it a few times before you are really comfortable with it. In moments of play where the player has to make a test, you roll a number of #d10 equal to your skill and attribute, or your power’s rating. You then look for matches — say three 7s (or 3×7) is a pretty good result. You want to beat the highest set of matches or highest number the opponent rolls. In play, it slows things a bit trying to figure out what matches you have, but it was nowhere as bad as the rules read or I expected.

2) Powers — we built characters for a low-level campaign (250 pts, if you need to know) and even then, my mentalist was powerful. Twice in the session, I used my mental blast and sent both targets to Hades with a thought. I had planned on him being strong, but not that strong. His ability to mold people’s thoughts — he main ability — was 7d10. At no point did he had much trouble with the opposition. Physical powers, however, do not appear to be quite as deadly, but we still accounted for a half dozen bad guys without too much trouble.

This seems to fit with my initial assessment that the purpose of the game was a “dark” supers environment where “shit gets fucked up quick.”

3) Character generation: I took a crack at this, gave up, and sloughed it off on the GM. It’s far too complex to be fun making a character. It reminds me of old Champions…but more annoying.

So at this point, I think I’m going thumbs down on Wild Talents, although if you get an enthusiastic GM who knows the system, it might be worth it.

 

1 March, 2015

Firefly RPG: Companies, Factions, and Organizations

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One of the bits I particularly liked about Mindjammer, the RPG, as well as Atomic Robo was the way they built organizations up (factions in the latter.) As Firefly is a Cortexified version of Fate, or a Fatified version of Cortex — take your pick — I thought it might be fun to introduce this in the Big Damn Game.

Pretty much any kind of organization can be represented — from an army unit to a military organization, from the local PTA to a company to a government. Like characters, they have the three attributes, but these have slightly different connotations:

PHYSCIAL: This is the extent of the manpower,  physical holdings, or presence of a company. An organization with a local/less than planetary presence is a d4, a planetary presence is d6, presence in one of the star systems of the ‘Verse d8, multiple systems d10, and ‘Verse-wide d12. Blue Sun, for instance, has a Verse-wide reach for its products, but does not appear to be present on every world and moon of the ‘Verse, so it would be a d10 (or a d8, if the GM decides that the company has offices and factories only in a select few worlds of each sun.) The Alliance is just about everywhere in the Black, so it runs a d12.

MENTAL: This represents the brainpower of the organization, and  is the ability to gather economic (or other) data, utilize that for its advantage, to create new product or do other forms of research. The average government of a moon is lucky if it can muster a d6, but the Alliance has a d10 and is striving for d12.

SOCIAL: This is the public relations wing, the reputation of the organization and represents the extent of its reach in society. While Blue Sun might barely make a d10 for their physical locations and manpower, they are a definite d12 Social for their near ubiquitous impact on product and culture, from food to entertainment, to medicine. Likewise, the Alliance is very powerful, but the impact of the War has not yet been overcome and many worlds still look to avoid dealing with the Alliance or actively oppose their operations. That puts them at a d10.

A character working with these groups could, for a plot point, exchange their attribute for the attribute of the organization when dealing with a situation, or to create an appropriate asset. Near some men to help you open that Kuzko Shop-Mart on Regina? A plot point and you’ve got yourself a posse of SHOPHANDS d6 ready to help you establish franchises all over that backwater dirtball! You’ll be home on Ariel in just a few weeks, at this rate! Need a bunch of men with guns to catch those fugitives you’ve been hunting? Good thing you’re working for Maximum Impact Security Services — MISS has offices all over this system and a quick call on the Cortex got you HIRED GUNS d6. Yahoo.

Problem is, if you’re working for these groups, they expect results will be shiny. Screw it up, and your use of their assets can cause a Complication for the company — that Kuzko setup went swimmingly and now you have a presence in the few towns worth a squint…and possibly just raised Kuzko’s footprint in the Border worlds, raising them from a d6 to d8 Physical. Sounds like someone’s getting a promotion!

Shame that hunt for those fugitives went pear-shaped. Might not have been so bad, save for the very public use of MISS mercs in town. Did you really have to take down a schoolhouse? MISS is bracing for the WHERE’S THE OVERSIGHT? d6 complication you got slapped on them. Great work, greenhorn; we wish you luck in your future endeavors…’course, we’ve also slagged your name from here to Blue Sun, so good luck finding legitimate gunwork.

If an organization is hit for more than a d12 complication, it’s “taken out” — if this was a physical operation, like a military operation, this means the unit is either destroyed, or routed and no longer a threat. If a mental one, the research might have wound up a dead end, or bad management led to a hemorrhage of talent. A social event that took out a company so badly damages their credibility as to impair their operations. The organization steps that die down. If they go under d4, the organization is destroyed.

Organizations also have skills — the GM should decide with are appropriate for the organization. They should also have some kind of MISSION STATEMENT distinction (Kuzko’s “Best prices on the border”, for instance…) and two others that are appropriate like Blue Sun’s “Biggest Corporation in the Verse” or the Alliance’s “We’re from the government….” they can use.

An example of an organization might be Kuzko Shop-Mart…

Kuzko Shop-Mart

Mission Statement: Best Prices on the Border d8

Distinctions: Terrible but Cheap Labor Practices d8, Largest Logistics Network in the ‘Verse d8

Attributes — Physical d8, Mental d8, Social d8

Sills: Influence d8, Labor d6, Survive d6

Kuzko started as a purveyor to the Independent movement, but toward the end of the conflict quickly shifted to a commercial focus to avoid any repercussions from the War. Their large Border network of suppliers and buyers allowed them to swiftly gain a foothold in several major markets, and the perception of their having been Independent allowed them to build a loyal customer base. The company is know for having the best prices, for always hiring, and for being a royal pain to work for, with lackluster pay and an aggressive cost containment strategy.

So there’s a quick hash-up of rules for organizations in Firefly. Feel free to comment or make suggestions for how to make them better.

 

1 March, 2015

Hacking the Firefly RPG

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One of the few complaints that we had when we tested Firefly against Serenity was the monolithic quality of the attributes — Physical, Mental, and Social. We felt that this didn’t allow the characters to be unique enough in some ways. So here’s my “fix” for the attributes in Firefly…use the attributes from Serenity.

When making a character, use Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligence, and Willpower, and build the character for 48 points — that gives you the same d6, d8, and d10 (x2) dispersion of Firefly. You can use these more varied attributes to customize your characters even more. Some maybe your character is very strong, but can’t walk through an empty room without tripping. In Firefly, you might have chosen a d8 to balance these traits, or gone with d10 to model the big bruiser you wanted to build. With this you can give the character a d6 Agility and d10 strength.

What about Social? Here the old attribute would be Willpower.

Otherwise, you roll the same way as you do with unadulterated Firefly.

 

20 February, 2015

Quick Review: Smuggler’s Guide to the Rim, for Firefly RPG

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The latest supplement for the Firefly RP dropped this morning as a PDF; the print book is a few weeks away (my guess.) I had a chance to skim the book well enough to do a quick review of the product. Smuggler’s Guide to the Rim is primarily a GM resource and pre-generated adventure supplement. At 291 pages, almost half of it is a pair of adventure campaigns, maps, appendices with Chinese comments for players to throw off for verisimilitude. The rest of the book is primarily a new reputation mechanic, new templates using these rules for character and spacecraft creation, and the “Good Shepherd Run” — a cargo/passenger run that provides locations, GMCs (GameMaster Characters), and ships for your campaign.

Style: 4 out of 5 — it’s the usual high quality MWP has had since the Cortex Plus lines started rolling out. It’s well written and edited, the art is mostly screencaps from the show, photos of characters in appropriate dress, and some good quality “game art.” The whole thing is nicely hypertext linked so you can bounce around the book as you need. The print version, I suspect, will be softcover and should be a nicely done as the Things Don’t Go Smooth supplement.

Substance: 3 out of 5 — For me, this wasn’t the best supplement I’ve bought, but it wasn’t the worst. If you like to run pre-generated campaigns, bump the Substance up to 4 out of 5. The reputation mechanic is nicely done, the templates for character creation is very useful, and the settings of the Good Shepherd Run is good material to use in a pinch.

Is it worth it? The PDFs on Drive Thru are usually marked down to $17ish bucks. For that, yes, it’s worth it; the print book/pdf combo was $30 for me. Is it worth it? If you use the adventure material, it’s a definite buy; if you don’t….meh….

However, the Firefly line is definitely a labor of love for the people at MWP, and it shows. I haven’t done more than run a few adventures, but I haven’t felt bad supporting the line, thus far. Since it’s pretty easy to tweak the material for the original Cortex rules, if you prefer, I’d say buy it.

 

11 February, 2015

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG

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The last two weeks saw the big denouement of our Battlestar Galactica campaign. In it, the fleet was stopped at Argos — site of ancient Kobolian colony, where the civilians were engaged in harvesting food and collecting livestock. After six months of running for their lives, the civilians don’t seem overly enthusiastic about picking up and looking for some mythic planet, Earth.

The humans have set up New Caprica — the new “capital” of the world, centered on one of the ruins of a city and surrounded by spacecraft which are providing housing, production, and protection as the pre-fab houses start to go up. The interim president is overseeing the half dozen or so “temporary” settlements from New Caprica, while their divine prime minister, ATHENA, has set herself up in the resurrection ship to keep an eye on the big production vessels and liners that cannot make planetfall. They are protected by a slice of Basestar 19‘s air group, but the majority of their firepower is off to assault Hades at New Ophiuchi.

The military mission does several jumps a day, using Cylon navigational data, and 48 hours later, launches an ambitious three pronged move on the forces there. A small group, led by a pregnant Six, and including PCs that were responsible for giving them humanoid Cylons (or “Seraph”) free will and ending their reproductive issues, attempt to win over the Seraph there with the gift of free will. It almost doesn’t work, but the skin jobs take the programming upgrade to free themselves of the domination of the Blaze. In turn, Hades — now aware something is wrong — sics the centurions on the humanoids of the “infected” basestar, and the other ships begin firing on it. The team jumps away to report their failure, and the main assault jumps…

…and horribly biffs the roll! “Their” Basestar 19 jumps into one of the two modern basestars and badly damages both so that they take several minutes to get into the fight. A judicious expense of plot points by the commander of Galactica saw her just avoid one of the older Cylon War basestars. Cygnus, their gunship, jumped straight into the middle of the “infected” basestar — destroying both immediately.

One of the player’s PCs, the CAG, lauched her forces right into the middle of a 6:1 dogfight, with the point defense of the nearest basestar and Galactica overlapping right on top of them. It’s a bloodbath for all sides, but they are able to nuke the older basestars out of the fight (and eventually, they’ll fall out of orbit…can you say “extinction event?”) In the midst of massive debris fields, raiders, kinetic kill rounds from Galactica and missiles from the basestars, the air group gets pasted.

On the surface, the other prong of the attack had come in at the same time as the political move to try and win over the Seraph. Landing a Cylon transport packed with centurions, led by the original version of ATHENA, Threes (the lead being NIKE), Fives (led by ARTEMIS), and Sevens (the lead being ARES), Eights (led by POSEIDON), and with a contingent of Nines (these are our Leobens) led by HERMES and a PC who has had visions of this battle, the ground assault attempts to infiltrate HADES’ operation to awaken a shard of the Titan HECATE.

The resulting fight is a classic James Bond underground base style fight — centurions and Seraph on both sides blazing away. In the middle, Hermes (in the body of a Nine) managed to get to a control system and cut power on the massive commandstar on the ground. (The bad guys were using it to try and access the shard.) Athena and Hades have an impressive god on goddess fight that winds up with Athena revealing her angelic nature, buring Hades to a cinder, and many of the nearby combatants. she pulls him into the shard, which goes active.

The Nines, led by the player’s character rush into the shard after them, seeking to answer all their questions about existence. As they do, he can almost see the three faces of Hecate regarding them impassively. In they go, never to be seen again…

The battle in space is finally won at high cost by the players. The first night of this story ended there.

The second night (Tuesday) saw a “talk about our feelings” A story and an intriguing mystic B story. The night revolved around one player’s troupe of characters (the other was away on business…), and saw the CAG trying to come to grips with the loss of half her people, the need to use more Seraph, and her attempts to reorg her air group to be ready for combat. There were scenes with the injured in the infirmary, with the mundanities of moving their assets to be able to use them, as well as a wake for the fallen pilots.

The B story was the push portion of the “episode” — back at Argos, a resurrection tank goes active an pulls together a Nine…but without a download from the “soulstone”, long dead when the Blaze was first bested. The player’s Nine emerges, his memories of what happened when he ran into the shard somewhat muddled, more a dream than memories. He is at peace, calm, determined, and as a prophet, has been given the chance to spread the Truth. He and the copy of Athena on the ship discuss  “God” and the rules — the importance of intelligent life, the inevitable evolution of the same toward god-like creatures (like her), and the inviolate nature of causality. He also knows they should continue to Earth, which is “being made ready” for them. He doesn’t remember much more than that.

This surprisingly filled the second night quite nicely.

Next week, Galactica returns to Argos, there will be big politics trying to get the people to up and move to Earth — several more months away — and trying to integrate the two peoples while retaining the stability of their weakened society.

Oh…and Earth.

 

24 January, 2015

Sex Dungeons & Dragons

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You wish…

 

21 January, 2015

Quick Review: Wild Talents

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So, there’s the chance of a second game group and a day of play in the offing for me. After some Wild_Talents-232x300blathering at each other, we’ve seem to come to the conclusion a superhero campaign might be the best received. The GM is looking to do a gritty superhero game. The idea seems to be to shoot for a The Dark Knight Returns sort of flavor.

The system he’s suggesting for the action is Wild Talents — a superhero game by Arc Dream Publishing from back around 2006. It was a follow-on game/setting to Godlike, a “gritty superhero game set in WWII” that prided itself on losing the spandex. Wild Talents had some good talent on it. Wild Talents is being pitched on Arc Dream’s page as leaving the characters more vulnerable physically and motivationally. “All too superhuman” is the catch phrase, which implies a game where the character’s are “appropriately” angsty and “realistic.”

I’m reviewing the ebook, as I don’t have a physical copy. The layout and look is good, but the writing is a bit dry. As to the system, it uses the “One Roll Engine” which is, I suspect, an attempt to speed play and make it easier. It might play that way (haven’t actually played yet…), but it reads as paradoxically complex for a single roll mechanic.

It’s a dice pool game. Collect d10s according a skill or power rating. You look for matches. The highest matched dice is the “height” — how well you succeeded, the number of matches is the “width” or how fast you succeeded (or did damage in combat.) There’s a difficulty scale from 0-10, and the situational modifiers pull or give dice. for simplicity sake, you are limited to rolling no more than 10 dice. Sounds easy…;til you get to dice “types”; there’s a litany of them — regular, hard, and wiggle, penalty and gobble, and you can add expert or fixed or squishy dice… Hard dice do a fixed result, wiggle can be modulated in their effect by the player; penalty and gobble dice are tied to difficulty — losing dice due to a situation, or losing their number of matches if they are beaten in a contest.

It could be an easy set of rules to play, but reading the book, it doesn’t come off that way.

Characters have six stats that can have regular, hard, or wiggle dice. There’s skills. The powers are hyperstats (superhuman stats), hyperskills, or “miracles” (powers.) The dice ratings are linked to examples of how much you could lift, how smart or persuasive you are, etc. Powers have flaws, pretty standard for supers games.

Combat is pretty straightforward, if you find the basic mechanic straightforward. There’s also a ‘damage silhouette’ with a certain amount of boxes of shock or lethal damage you can take.

There’s an alternate history for the campaign at the end that isn’t bad, and allows for a universe in which supers haven’t just shown up.

Overall, the basic idea of the “realistic” superhero game is pretty hard to pull off. If you’re going to add in actual powers, instead of just playing Batman, these assumptions won’t play very well with creatures like Superman or Wolverine. Verisimilitude is going to come more from the universe, than how “messed up” the characters are going to get. The One Roll Engine reads as terribly clunky, but I suspect this could be an artifact of the description of the mechanic in the book — I’ll hold judgment until it’s played.

Substance: The setting is well fleshed out without being too restrictive, and the rules cover the necessaries for playing a superhero game: 4 of 5. Style: the layout is good, the art is darkly atmospheric, in keeping with the style of the setting, but is average “game art” quality. The writing is surprisingly stilted and occasionally confusing for the people they had on the book: 3 out of 5.

Is it worth it? I honestly don’t know yet, but based off reading the game, if you want a “realistic” superhero game where the characters will get mashed up instead of riding through a lot of fighting — almost the antithesis of a supers setting — you could find a system for modern settings that accounted for, or could be adapted for, lower level powers. If you’re looking to do four color or even The Avengers cinematic-style supering, I’d suggest looking elsewhere.

Postscript: When I decided to take a crack at a “realistic” superheroes game, one of the things I also did was to make supers a historical artifact — we bent history to include alternate events with supers involved. Instead of going for the “look how real this is; the characters really get hurt!” angle, I went for more social restrictions. Sure you can knock down a building with your bare hands, but can you afford the lawsuit? Do you have a license to use your heat powers as a welder? does you wife know you were out all night fighting the sexy supervillainess? Shame you didn’t bring allies to back you up that nothing happened! This universe assumed the supers were willing to most act inside the law, but there were hints that most the governments of the world were just blustering and hoping these new gods wouldn’t just run roughshod over everything.

Should be interesting to see someone else’s take on supers.

 

17 January, 2015

New Weird Mode for Atomic Robo RPG

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Something I’m cooking up for the 1950 and 1970s period of our Atomic Robo game:

WHEELMAN

The wheelman is an expert with a vehicle (usually car, truck, boat…) and is often hired to get people in and out of a mission safely. The thought here is to emulate the bootlegger turned racer or getaway driver.

Skills: Contacts, Mechanic, Notice, Vehicles

Improvements: Specialize two trained skills.

Sample Stunts:

Duck in That Alley!: For a Fate Point, use Vehicle instead of Stealth to hide from a pursuer.

Just a Good Ol’ Boy: +2 with Vehicle skill to create an advantage when attempting a fancy stunt.

Peddle to the Metal: +1 to vehicle test when overcoming in a chase.

Rev’ It: Use Vehicle instead of Provoke when in a vehicle.

She’ll Hold Together: The vehicle driven has an Armor: 2.

 

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