24 May, 2021

Review: The Troubleshooters RPG

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Here was another Kickstarter that caught my eye last year (gah! it was an expensive year for me with Kickstarter last year!): The Troubleshooters, a Swedish game based on the old Franco-Belgian style of comics from the 1960s/70s. Think Tintin, and you’re on the right track; this is set in the Jet Age, when tourism became a think and much of these comics revolved around traveling the world for adventure (similar to the I,Spy series or James Bond movies…). The artwork was superb (I like it when I can identify gear in RPG art!) and caught the style of the comics, so I backed the project. After some delays caused by an injury sustained by the main writer/artist, the PDF dropped a week or so ago.

That gave me the opportunity to kick the tires on this games system with the wife and kiddo this weekend. It got a solid thumbs up from both of them, and I found it worked well to help the story along with only a few hiccups that were mostly the first play session blues of getting used to the system. We ran the quickstart adventure they dropped last year The Minoan Affair — a quick “save the friend and stop the dastardly smugglers” one-shot.

The basic mechanics: Troubleshooters uses a percentage test. You roll for a challenge and have to roll under your score in a skill like Agility or Drive. If you succeed and get “doubles” (say a 33 on a skill of 45) you also get good karma — this lends benefits to other test, etc. Likewise, a double on a fail is bas karma — your gun jams, and so on. You have certain abilities that allow you to use the game currency — story points — to either flip the roll (a 73 becomes a 37 for 2 story points, but if you have “Born Behind the Wheel” than allows the flip with a single point) and complications that give you story points when they affect you. Your health/damage is tracked with Vitality and is usually somewhere in the 4-6 range. You get hurt and lose enough to hit Vitality 0 and you’re “out cold.” You don’t die in this game unless its story appropriate, you do something really stupid, or you trade the Vitality hit for a “wounded” or mortal peril” tag — that puts you in danger of death, but keeps you in the action for longer.

The system also has an advantage/disadvantage system using “pips”. A +2 pip means that if you get a 1 or 2 on the ones die, you succeed, no matter the tens, and vice-versa for disadvantages. It’s a bit odd but works well. There’s also a tweak to allow you to use a +/- 5% per pip. We found the pip system worked fast and well. Karma, your signature item (be it a car, or a gun, or whatever), and more difficult tests give you an advantage or disadvantage rating, usually +/- 2 or 5. It sounds confusing when you’re reading it, I found, but played very well.

Combat is simple opposed tests, the character’s appropriate skill vs. the bad guys, who tend to have generalized skills like “basic” or “boxing” or even “bam! biff! whop!” to match the style of sound effect for their fighting. Challenges can be met with the appropriate skill, or sometimes a related one — agility or endurance for running away from a threat, for instance. There are also extended challenges that require multiple tests together (and often can be done by different members of the cast): looking for the island where the hostages are could take a Vehicles test to get there, a search to find them, an investigations to navigate properly…

Character creation: You get a group of templates you can tweak, otherwise you can put together your own with a set number of skills you can assign a percentage number to, pick a couple of appropriate abilities and complications, give the character a name and a look, and figure out how the characters net to allow them to get straight to it. It’s easy and fast. You get a signature item — like the pre-generated race car driver character’s Lancia Stratos, that give you benefits.

The game has it’s own comic universe set in the 1960s. Cool is definitely a factor here: the clothes, the cars, the look of the comics of that period will enhance the play. The stories are French comic styled — there’s danger and villains, but the gunplay is kept to a minimum, and characters are expected to punch or outsmart their way out of trouble. There’s the global bad guy organization, a la SPECTRE or CHAOS — in this case, the Octopus. In reality, the “Octopus” has been a name for various organized crime syndicates from the Cammora to a Bulgaria gang, and it was even the imagery used for the early capitalist trusts. SPECTRE in the James Bond books and movies used the Octopus as its symbol, linking it intentionally to these shadowy “Octopi” groups of the middle-20th Century.

The Kickstarter had a lot of extras with it — a few canned adventures, character “passports”, and a GM screen, maps, just for starters. I pledged at the Business class which was about $100US — so is it worth it? Yes — if you are looking for a game that captured the Jet Age cool and the comics or movies of the period, it’s a fun game that’s nice to look at and has mechanics that are easy to learn and help the flow of play. I’m not sure of Helmgast’s plans for producing and marketing this beyond the Kickstarter; my hope is that Mödipiüs or one of the other Euro-game publishers snaps it up and keeps it going.

 

15 May, 2021

Review: Broken Compass RPG

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A friend of mine turned me on to the Broken Compass role playing game that was being Kickstarted last year by a small Italian company, Two little Mice. (Man, the Italian RPG scene is hopping!) I’m a bit fan of the classic pulp era for a game setting (as evidenced by the plethora of 1930s stuff Black Campbell Entertainment has done for Fate and Ubiquity), so I dove in. About a month ago, all of the physical books and material came in. We had a week’s downtime from our Lex Arcana (another Italian game company!) to give it a try.

Broken Compass has the same goals that Fate and Ubiquity had — to make play fast and easy, and to get the rules out of the way. Fate does this well through extremely simple core mechnaics, but has a few elements — tagging scenes, for instance — that can be difficult for new players and for those used to the GM doing all the setting work to grab a hold of. Ubiquity does well until combat, where it bogs down into gronyard-like crunch. This system keeps it simple with core mechanics that do not change from managing a task, confronting a danger, or getting into a fight. the base die mechanic has the player roll a number of die equal to an attribute and skill and look not for a specific number, but for matches (kinda like Yahtze.) For basic tasks, you need a pair; for critical ones, three of a kind and so on. You could standard d6s or the company’s snazzy specialty d6s which feature the cardinal points of the compass (N,S, E, W, a broken compass, and a skull).

The character creation is simple and fast: pick two tags, like “action hero” or “femme fatale”, which give you an extra die on two of the six attributes (Action, Guts, Knowledge, Society, Wild, Crime) and on eight of the skills (there are three under each of the attributes. Simple. You’ll have between 3 and 6 dice to roll, not counting bonuses from gear and conditions. You get a two “expertise” tags that give you an extra die when appropriate. you start with 10 luck points — when you get to zero, you have a “luck coin” to help you out of danger. The system is not designed to kill a character (though it can), but give you conditions like, exhausted or scared — negative ones that take a die if you have it, or positives like confident or daring which add a die.

Villains and opponents are handled like a challenge (which don’t cause you to lose luck) or a danger (where you do get hurt.) A bunch of ordinary mooks attacking you might be a basic or critical danger, depending on their skill, or higher if they are a privileged henchmen or big bad. In a brawl, you roll an Action+Fight vs. the difficulty of the challenge, and take out the baddies dependent on how well you did, but if you fail, they do you an appropriate number of luck points (and possibly pick up a condition.) In a firefight, there’s the usual back and forth — first you shoot with Action+Shoot (or Guts+Shoot), then they shoot and you try to avoid with Action+Stunt. The GM rarely, if ever, rolls; it’s all on the players, who are encouraged to narrate their actions.

It plays very quickly and easily, and our first run of the game was as a playtest of an adventure for an upcoming product that usually would have been run in Ubiquity. I have to say, Broken Compass has won me over. It’s more intuitive than the +/0/- dice mechanic of fate, and simpler when it should be than Ubiquity — my go-to pulp action RPG systems to this point. The system is lightweight enough to carry any genre with a bit of tweaking.

The physical product is superb! The core book or Adventure Journal features a classic pocket journal look: faux-leather with a proper stitch binding and heavy gloss paper in 9.5×6″ (the same size as the Fate books). The edges are curved, it’s got a bookmark ribbon, an elastic strap to hold it closed, and elastic pencil holder. It’s a brilliant bit of design. Internal layout is clear and simple, with a minimum of nonsense to distract. The art is good (although these days, with Free League and Wizards’ art design doing stunning work, this is good for most products out there) and the typeface and sizing is clear and easy to read. (The more I publish stuff, the more impressed i am by these things.) Here’s the example from Two Little Mice’s Kickstarter page:

It came with a GM screen that is similarly sized: 9.5×6″/per panel, with a 4-panel spread on heavy cardboard with appropriate artwork on the player side, and most of the basic rules on the GM side. Again, clear, concise, and workable. I didn’t have to access the book more than twice during play. also included in my pledge was their First Season book Golden Age with some tweaks and canned adventures for the 1930s. A Spin Off: Luck Tales book similarly give a few new rules and adventures. There was a world map (circa 1999), a cloth bag of specialty dice, a plastic luck coin, and posters featuring the art from the book, as well as a Rival Passport (a listing of big bads for your game), an Adventurer Passport to record characters, and a selection of period postcards from exotic locales.

Two Little mice is currently running a Kickstarter for the next two “seasons” of the game — a pirate setting and a Victorian fantasy/steampunk setting, and the original books, GM screen, maps and dice with luck coin, and posters can be had with the right pledge.

So is it worth it? Absolutely. The physical materials are top-notch: the books are on good quality gloss paper, have a faux-leather cover, decent art with simple and clear layouts. The existing books can be had in PDF format on DriveThruRPG.com for $30 and $19.

 

13 May, 2021

First Impressions: Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 with S&S Cam and Piston Upgrade

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In my previous review of the 2021 Royal Enfield Interceptor, I had alluded to the ability to upgrade this lovely piece of work that the boys in India have given us. I had the dealer install the S&S slip on pipes (with baffles…I don’t hate my neighbors that much), and I had swapped the air filter for a K&N with a DNA airbox eliminator. This had made her a bit beefier at the altitudes we right here in New Mexico (between a mile and two miles up) and she could reliably hit the ton in 6th gear.

Next up was cosmetic fixes — Hitchcock bar end mirrors in stainless and black shorty levers to go with the short RE flyscreen, and a little tool bag for some kind of storage. But the big mods were still forthcoming: I decided to have the S&S high-performance camshaft installed, as well as their high-compression pistons. Why? Honestly, I don’t know; I’ve never done anything to modify an engine before. I figure the engineers are more experienced than I am, so leave well enough alone. But I sensed she could be more…

The local dealer has just picked up Enfield, but they have built race bikes before so I felt fairly confident they could do the job. The labor was about eight hours on top of the parts, or about $1500 out of pocket. After researching about i was fairly confident we could squeeze about 15% more horsepower and torque out of her. When I got it back, the low end torque and power was brilliant! Then I took it up the Sandia Crest road (where these pics were taken.) It’s a climb of about 4000′ over ten miles with 120 turns in the road. On hard acceleration up the mountain, she was rattling and sounding like she was going to come apart. Then she cut out. The bike fired right back up, but had to be ridden very gently. Even at highway speeds (out here that’s 70mph), she was getting detonation.

Back to the dealer. The timing was off by quite a bit, so if you do this, the cam does not line up as it would with the original cams. Have your mechanic (or you) do a timing wheel to make sure. Once that was done, we were able to pull 115mph indicated out of her. Low end torque is brilliant, and she dusts the stock Continental GT my friend has in acceleration. However, she was still getting light detonation with heavy throttle in 5th or 6th gear once she got hot. i threw some octane booster on top of the 91 octane I use (the best we can get easily in NM) and the problem occurred rarely and only when really hot. She’s also picked up a rough idle and gets all Ducati about starting in the morning. Some of this was further mitigated as our state went to “summer gas” — the ethanol content drops about this time of the year — and the octane booster hasn’t been needed. So it seems to be a fuel/air mix issue now — no surprise since the compression got bumped to 11:1.

I hadn’t heard it for a week, then we took the bikes for a long 150 mile run that included a lovely stretch of arrow straight road — flat as can be — that rarely has traffic. Going for the ton with a quick throttle snap and there it was; bad enough to start losing power. Downshift to 4th and hammer it got me to the ton before a quick double shift up to 6th and while you could heard the detonation, she still hit 110mph into a strong wind with my heavy ass on the bike.

The next step is to get a Power Commander 5 on her and see if we can pull the O2 sensors to get a good autotune on her. S&S and Dyno don’t have a map for this configuration, nor does Powertronics. Dyno-ing her isn’t really an option. There’s no dyno in Albuquerque who I’d trust with her, and the nearest is a 5 hour drive to Farmington.

So is it worth it? On the camshaft, I’d definitely say yes. Even with the fueling issue, it’s pulling like a tractor at low RPM (about 2500-3000) and where it would top out about 100mph and 6500RPM, she’ll run out to the redline and still has more. On the pistons? I’d shy away from this until someone has built a reliable map (hell, that might be me, soon…) You’ll save a lot in time and/or money and still get plenty out of the bike without the finicky fuel issue.

Update: It looks like we’re going with the Power Commander V route, and the dealer is going to split the cost for a dyno run with me to clean up the fueling/timing. That means they will probably have a map for sale once we get this sorted out in June.

 

13 May, 2021

LIVE on DriveThruRPG: The City of a Thousand Minarets, a Guide to 1930s Cairo

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It’s only been a few months since we got The Marvelous City out, our guide to Rio de Janeiro for the Ubiquity system. There’s been a few hitches with getting the book out in print with DriveThruRPG due to their new print setup, but it is live on Amazon.

While we were in the beginning stages of that book, we were approached by Scott Glancy about doing a book on Cairo. I had a look at his initial notes and material that had been developed for an abortive computer RPG and signed him up right away. He turned in the second draft of material in November, right as the Marvelous City was going online and we’ve been furiously working on getting “the Cairo book” finished.

Now, The City of a Thousand Minarets is live for PDF on DriveThruRPG.com with print versions coming soon. Then, this summer, we can turn our attention to getting the FATE version of book books out.

 

14 March, 2021

Review: 2021 Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 (and a bit of the Continental GT)

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I’ve been riding the new Triumphs since 2004. Their sport touring 2001 Sprint, the naked streetfighters — 2006 Speed and the 2010 Street Triple; the wonderful 2010 Thruxton and the equally excellent 2018 Street Cup. They’ve all been great bikes but all have had electrical gremlins (with the exception of the Thruxton, which was flawless.) I’d kept the Thruxton for just shy of 7 years, and traded it for the Street Cup, which other than a lackluster top end, was better in every way.

So why the hell am I riding a Royal Enfield Interceptor now?

One of my riding acquaintances showed up with one a few months back — a lovely creature with chrome tank and classic styling that Triumph tries to evoke, but Enfield just does. He let me ride the thing and it was surprisingly fast and nimble…easily as good as my Triumph. Most importantly, it was fun. Fun in a way the Thruxton had been but the others never were — fun at slow speeds, fun doddling about, as much as ripping up mountain twisties. I went back to my bike and was perfectly happy…then my local Triumph shop, Motopia New Mexico, started carrying the Enfields at the start of the year. This coincided with some electrical issues the Street Cup had started having, usually the harbinger of a whopping big repair bill on the electrics in the near future: my heated handgrips wouldn’t work save sporadically, my four-way turn signals would keep my normal turn signals from working (a fault in the starter switch module.)

And there was the Interceptor. I’d looked at the Continentals when they first came out, but we didn’t have a dealer in Albuquerque at the time, and having ridden the Bullet 500…well, that was not a bike to blow your kilt up (but it would put your hands to sleep from vibration.) A friend of mine and I decided to test ride the new Conti and Interceptor, trading off halfway through the ride to get a feel for them. I liked the Continental riding position better, but that chrome tank with the classic badging was calling me. My buddy bought one.

One day on old Route 66 (yes, that one), we decided to see how they compared. The Triumph was kicking the Enfield’s ass for the first 30mph or so, then the Conti with its 650cc motor hit third gear and blew the Street Cup with its water-cooled 900cc away. While getting the electrics sorted on the Triumph, I noted the presence of a chrome Interceptor on the floor. I went home on her.

After that long way to get to the point, here we go. The Interceptor is a 650cc parallel twin motorcycle in the style of the old British bikes (including Royal Enfield). It looks the part, it doesn’t just crib some styling queues like Triumph’s Modern Classic line, or the BMW R9T; a new bike pretending to be a classic — like the Moto Guzzi V7, this is a legitimate “old school” bike with a few new tricks up its sleeve. Yes, it has ABS and it works okay on the ByBre brakes. (Apparently ByBre is Brembo made in India…) It’s got electronic fuel injection and the map is very good and adaptive to conditions. Other than that, well, that’s it.

The frame was designed by Harris Performance and the steering geometry and weight distribution is fantastic. The bike is very nimble — easily on par with the Street Cup — and fast enough for what it is. The suspension is pretty basic, although the rear shocks (no, the reservoir isn’t real) are adjustable to five points, and with a tick over the bottom setting, it’s done quite well on most terrain. The front definitely needs progressive springs; it’s soft in hard bumps. The stock tires are the same Pirelli Phantom Sportcomps the new Triumphs use. They’re also the ony ties I’ve had slip on me in damp. Not wet, damp. They’ll be coming off first opportunity, but they are serviceable and some folks really like ’em.

The motor is smooth, sounds good (especially with the addition of a pair of S&S silencers and a K&N air filter with DNA airbox removal), and on paper is anemic as hell, producing only 45ish horsepower at my mile up. (I probably made back the altitude changes with the pipes.) It’s not anemic. The gearing on this thing is superlative. Once you hit third, the Interceptor runs hard. Hard enough to smoke a 900cc Triumph. It’s getting about 60mpg for me with mixed highway/city riding and a few miles lower in town. I figured this out by calculating the mileage at gas stops; the gas gauge is, not to put too fine a point on it, execrable. It shows me as on reserve with a good 1.5 gallons left in the tank. Low end, you should get about 160 miles on the tank, high end 200ish. Fueling is smooth and gives no hiccups. You can use lower octane if you have to, but I’d stick with premium.

And the looks… That chrome tank (soon to be joined by a chrome fender instead of a plastic silver one.) That classic badging. That motor: sculpted, clean, shiny. Everything about this bike comes together beautifully.

The downsides: The foot pegs are in an awful position when you stop. They’re right under your feet. When just out of the crate, the handlebars are way too high and forward. I had the mechanics rotate them about 30 degrees toward me. It’s not a cafe position, but it’s much more comfortable. The saddle’s a bit hard, but I did a 230 mile day on her the other weekend with just a bit of butt and hip soreness. The instrument cluster is very basic and compared to the gorgeous brushed aluminum of the Triumph, it’s a letdown. But you also won’t crash while admiring your dashboard. Another unfavorable comparison with Triumph: the Enfield’s gearbox is so-so. It shifts well enough but you’ve got to give it a kick; it doesn’t like a leisurely throw. It’s nowhere near as smooth as the Triumphs, which are some of the best shifting motorbikes I’ve ridden.

To give my Triumph a good send-off, I named her Lakshmibai, the Rani of Enfield as a tip of the hat to the (in)famous queen of Jhansi who led her troops against the British in the India Mutiny of 1857. That’s three history jokes rolled into one.

My buddy bought the white and silver/blue striped Continental, and nearly all the comments about the Interceptor hold for it, as well. The Conti shares most of its bits and bobs with the Interceptor. The footpegs are further back (and those rear sets will eventually make it onto my bike.) It has low cafe-styled bars that are well positioned but might be uncomfortable for those with back issues. I found them more comfortable. The tank is GP styles, instead of the classic teardrop. Otherwise, same bike. They do a lovely chrome one for the Continental, as well, but you don’t get the badge.

Out the door, the bike was a hair over $7000US with a 3 year warranty and 1 year roadside assistance, and was almost a straight trade for me. I had them removed the awful plastic mudguard extensions on the fenders, drop the S&S cans on, and over 1300 miles, she’s been flawless. On a “spirited” trip through the Valles Caldera and the twisty Route 4 to Jemez Springs, we were pushing these bikes hard in the turns and they were on par with any modern bike I’ve ridden.

But sometimes…that’s not quite enough. S&S has partnered up with Royal Enfield to develop a line of mods to improve the bike. This weekend, the Interceptor went in to receive a new high-performance camshaft and a set of pistons that brought the compression up from 9.5:1 to 11:1 — and it is glorious! My butt dyno tells me this thing is much faster off the line, with power coming up pretty much immediately. Where she would just scratch 100mph maxed on the throttle at 6500rpm (so at least you won’t blow up your motor…), she’s hitting 75 at just under 7000rpm in second gear! Cruising at about the same throttle position and revs, I’m getting about 5mph faster on the freeway. I anticipate (but cannot yet confirm) that she will probably bury the needle at the advertised 120 on the speedometer. Parts are ridiculously cheap: about $600, but labor is pretty intensive, so the labor costs if you don’t do it yourself are going to be spendy.

So if you are looking for a machine that will happily doddle around at 40 while still entertaining you, but can still carve canyons with the other bikes, the price point is definitely right.

 

14 March, 2021

Review: Lex Arcana RPG (and the Demiurge Screen…and the Encyclopedia Arcana)

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I have to thank one of my Facebook acquaintances and fellow game design/small publisher for this one: Lex Arcana. It looked interesting, and out Dungeons & Dragons campaign has been set in an alternate late antiquity Roman Empire, so i was interested in it for material to crib. After hearing it was a good system, but picked up the PDF and read through it. Then bought the Encyclopedia Arcana, their “sourcebook” on the setting in PDF. Then found a print version of both, plus the “Demiurge” (GM) screen at Miniature Market and picked them up. (I was really impressed with their selection, prices, and the speed of delivery — check ’em out.)

Back to Lex Arcana… Apparently, this had been a popular game in Europe in the 1990s, but recently was re-released through Kickstarter. First off: these books are gorgeous! The artwork is as good, and in some ways better than the stuff Wizards is doing for D&D and even the superb Odyssey of the Dragonlords. This holds through all of the products I’ve gotten, thus far, including a module in PDF on Constantinople. Production values are high — the paper quality, binding, layouts — it’s all just top shelf. This was easily one of the best buys for an RPG I’ve dropped money on in recent years.

So it’s pretty. How’s the system? Character creation can be a bit confusing at first, but I followed the flow they’d laid out in the book and had a version on one of my player’s characters from the D&D campaign banged out in under 15 minutes. Not bad — I do judge a game system based off of how long and how difficult character creation is. If I can knock out a character in 15 minutes or so and get playing, I’m not usually impressed. There’s a bit of weirdness where your attributes — strength, etc. don’t directly apply to things you do; they combine into….fields, I guess would be a good way to put it, like War or Nature or Society. This gives you a number from 2 to 18 being the top starting number, if i recall correctly. You pick skill, which give you a modifier to rolls in a certain field — bows in War, for instance. You pick your weapons and armor, and you’re ready to go.

The conceit here is you are part of a special force of the Praetorian Guard that hunts down mystic weirdness and threats to the Empire. There are rules for rising through the ranks, but also for magic and more importantly, for gaining favor from your patron deities. The piety score can be used to gain a bump in a test up to getting a bit of Olympian back-up. Magic here is not the “shoot fireballs from your fingers” stuff of D&D (thank the gods!) and focuses on pre and postcognition, interpreting omens and dreams, scrying, and manipulating the gods for favors. This is low magic that requires rituals, time, and effort to get something out of it.

The basic mechanics is a hit a target number system. How you do this is different…you get all the normal polyhedral dice for the game, but which ones you roll — that’s the difference. For instance, if I have a de Bello (War) of 16, I can chose dice that add to 16 (up to three dice, no more) — so I could do a d12+d4, or 2d8, or 2d6+d4. What’s the point of this? You ask. It does look like it could be confusing and slow play for new players, but for experienced folks, i think they could game the hell out of this for mathematical benefit. In the above example, you’re not rolling below a 2 (or 3 with the last option) which can be good for easier tasks. If you roll max on all dice, you roll them again and add to the original roll. What about odd-numbered die — d5, d7? Yes, that could be a thing. Combat is pretty straightforward, with damage based on the quality of your hit. For every three over, you gain a multiplier to the weapon damage. You’re not just getting up, either, if you get munched; damage here can be pretty deadly.

The downsides: there’s a lot of Latin used to give flavor. The character sheet and the used of terms like custodes, the agents of this group you’re supposed to be part of, might throw some folks but i suspect if you’re interested in this, that’s flavoring you might like.

The core book cost me $46. Is it worth it? Hell, yes. This is the first game one of my players — a Romanophile — is truly, actively interested in playing; another is a late antiquity historian turned acupuncturist — he’s in, as well. It’s pretty, well-designed, and there’s a lot you could crib for a setting or another game system. I fused the Piety system here with the one from the Odyssey of Theros book for Dungeons & Dragons 5e for our current game.

Instead of doing a different review, i figured I’d merge this with the other Lex Arcana products I picked up. Easily, the best sourcebook I’ve read in some time is the Encyclopedia Arcana.

This book is a genuine book of scholarship tweaked to be a setting guide for ancient Rome. There’s stuff on the road systems, the post service, the military (army and navy), shipping and trade, the ranks of government and society, as well as food, clothing, disease, and lastly magic. Written by Francesca Garello, it’s well worth picking up even if you don’t get the game; I’ve already be cribbing stuff for our D&D game. This was about $40 and yes, it’s worth every penny. The art, writing, research, and production values are sine que non.

Lastly, the Demiurge Screen.

Pretty much everything you need to quickly adjudicate social interactions, investigations, fights, experience — it’s there. The cardboard is thick and top-quality, the art is good and evocative of the setting, and it’s surprisingly cheap at $18 over on Miniature Market.

 

13 March, 2021

Review: Santorini (the game)

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Here’s a new favorite of my wife and me; my daughter is less enthusiastic, but enjoys it: Santorini. Produced by Spin Master Games this is a simple, fast game for 2-3 players.

It features a basic plastic island with a playing board on the top. It’s a rule light, strategy-rich game where you take your two workers and try to build a building on the island to three stories and get one of your pieces up there before the others do. Sounds simple. Isn’t. You also randomly (or at least we do) a Greek god who gives certain abilities and sometimes special win parameters. (Hermes allows you to move a piece any number of spaces in a straight line, for instance; Ares can destroy a story because, well, he’s Ares.) These provide different challenges to work with and some are quite powerful. (We don’t use Bia — it’s a game breaker, we feel.)

You have two actions — move then build, and you have to be able to do both, or you’re out of the game. This makes planning you builds to allow your workers to mount the stories to victory. But the other players can stop you, given the opportunity by putting a dome of the third story and blocking you from advancing to the top.

The art is gorgeous (see the box top), the building pieces capture the whitewash and cerulean blue of the eponymous island. There’s a nice expansion set, The Golden Fleece, that adds heroes to the mix, instead of gods.

It think this one cost me $30 at Ettin, our local game store. So is it worth it? Absolutely! You can play a few games in 15 minutes, or find yourself playing a single game for an hour, if the players are using their gods to full effect. It’s a solid buy if you like board games.

 

12 March, 2021

Review: Potato Pirates & Enter the Spudnet

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I saw this game by chance on Kickstarter a few months back and thought a board game that taught the basics of programming might be fun for my daughter for Christmas. (Yes, she’s that kind of kid…) It was bundled with their internet-oriented Enter the Spudnet game. Potato Pirates is now one of my kiddo’s favorite games, and it’s easy to see why: it’s super easy to play, fun, and quick. You can play a few games of Potato Pirates in half an hour.

You get two ships named after different types of potatoes and potato-related foods, and a hand of cards that have either an action like “mash” or “roast” and a number of potatoes that are suitably murdered on a ship, and program cards that set up parameters like multiplying the attack, or conditionals. There’s also “surprise cards” that allow you to recruit more potatoes, or hijack another player’s ship and the like. Lastly, if you get all six of the blue “Potato King” cards, you win; otherwise you have to destroy all of the ships of your opponents. Anytime a Potato King is drawn, you are require as the player to shout “All Hail!” and the others must race to shout “Potato King” first, or pay two potatoes as punishment. (The potatoes are represented by small and large [counts as 5] foam balls.)

It’s silly and fun, and the art look like it came from the same guys that gave us the Oatmeal, but the game design is by Codomo — an outfit out of Singapore. You can find it at ThinkFun or Potato Pirates website. This game runs $35-40 US retail. Is it worth it? The retail price is a touch high-priced for my liking, but just a touch; I got it as a bundle which was much more reasonable. It you like whimsical, simple, and fast games for playing with kids, it’s a firm yes, especially if you can find it under $30.

Tied to this is Enter the Spudnet, in which you pay delivery services that must fulfill orders around the game world.

There are six factions, and you have to set up your two factories, draw cards that give you actions tied to internet concepts like 404s, DoS attack, etc. These allow you to destroy your competitions “ships” as they go out and attempt to be the first to bring all your orders in; you can overload the factory servers of your enemies and stop them from being able to function — though you can’t use their space/server, either. There’s rules for bots, and other internet “goodness”. It can get pretty cutthroat and is a lot of fun. Like Potato Pirates, this is a fast-playing game — maybe 30 minutes — and is simple enough that my 10 year old grokked it straight off. My wife, who has a strong grounding in programming, thought it quite good.

Again, the art, production values, and rules are excellent. It retails for about $70 and can be found at the link above. Is it worth it? Again, as with Potato Pirates, it’s a touch high in price, but as a bundle was reasonable. I would definitely buy it if you found it under $60.

 

12 March, 2021

Review: Rallyman GT

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A few years back, when my daughter was old enough that board games became a thing in the household, we started picking up a number of different things. One of them was the old version of Rallyman, an excellent racing game out of France. We played it quite a bit, but it’s sat unused for a year or so. then I saw there was a new version by Holy Grail Games for Kickstarter last year and backed it. This was for Ralleyman Dirt…I hadn’t realized they’d also done a road/track racing version, GT.

I stumbled across this new game at the excellent Ettin Games and Hobbies here in Albuquerque, and on a whim decided to buy it. The daughter and I kicked the tires on it this weekend and early this evening, and here’s the basics:

The essential design and mechanic remains: You have a rally car mini and a “dashboard” that give you information on what kind of awfulness happens if you biff it while taking your turn, depending on conditions and tire types. You still roll dice that represent the gear you are in — 1st through 6th, with two “coast dice” to hold your speed, but added are red “brake” dice to change your speed. One of the issues with the original design was that you could only drop or go up with dice you still had available. This allows you to accelerate hard and still be able to brake without having the dice to downshift. It’s a good fix.

There’s also the boards for the the track. In the original — you have a couple of board you could piece together to make different tracks, but there wasn’t a ton of modularity. The new game uses interlocking hex tiles that allow a lot more tracks to be set up. The sections of track are rated for difficulty from yellow, orange, through to red. If while rolling your dice you get a warning or ! face, this shows an increasing lack of control. If you get three, you lose control and spin out or crash and do damage. Damage takes away gear dice (starting with 6 and working down), or get you in the coast or brake dice.

When racing, the car in the higher gear goes first, and ties go to the car in front, or on the inside of the track. the turns have special restrictions for speed, and some cause automatic ! results, even if you get through. there are rules for weather, for pit stops, and there is a mechanic for saving from the dreaded ! — if you take a chnce and go “all out” you roll all the dice together. You gain a “focus point” that can be used when you roll the dice on your subsequent turns one after the other to negate a ! result.

The rules are simple, easy, and we found that the addition of the brake dice really made the game work well. The art on the tiles and in the rule book is quite good, and the car minis are simple but serviceable. The price was $50 at the FLGS.

So was it worth the price? Absolutely. If you enjoy racing board games, it’s a great buy.

 

12 March, 2021

Coming Soon: The Cairo Sourcebook for 1930s Pulp Games

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We’ve barely gotten The Marvellous City out the door before we turned our attention to a sourcebook for 1930s Cairo for use with Ubiquity and Fate. The turn around time was brutal, especially with a rough semester for the high school and community college I work at, plus an ongoing illness…but it’s on it’s way.

This one will be the first Black Campbell product not written by (or mostly written by) Scott Rhymer (yours truly). The author on this one is Adam Scott Glancy, who approached us through the Ubiquity RPG group on Facebook and asked if we would be interested in publishing him. After having a look at his initial notes and work, I was thrilled to welcome him aboard. I will be penning the adventure or two that will go with the city guide, but most of this is his baby. I am handling layout, editing, and the like, so right now the PDF is probably about a month away, and another for print — depending on if i can get DriveThruRPG to work with us.

That said, The Marvelous City and most of our back catalogue is hitting Amazon.com, as well as DriveThru. This book will most likely follow that route.

For those of you waiting for the FATE version of The Marvelous City, it’s on the way, and will get some love after this one drops for Ubiquity.

 

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