The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XII: Into the Zone

Into the Zone (Exalted Funeral/Round Table Games)

$15.00 in Print+PDF (on sale as of 8/9/23 for $12)

Not to be confused with Into the Zone the Solo RPG, or Enter the Zone the Solo Journaling RPG, Into the Zone is a multiplayer conventional rpg that no doubt can be hacked to do solo journaling, and maybe somewhere on itch.io that's already been done. I'm still puzzling through the hows and whys of solo journaling rpgs, but that's not relevant to Into the Zone....so let's get in to it!

What it is: a 36 page rulebook in the artpunk zine rpg style, with a tight rules lite experience aimed at emulating video games and films like the STALKER series, Metro 2033, and...um, other games, books and maybe film that are also riffing off of the rather deeply inspirational Stalker and also influenced by the tragedy at Chornobyl. A recent influence of note is the movie Annihilation, and to a lesser degree the Southern Reach trilogy. Into the Zone tries to broaden the thematic concept by letting you place your particular restricted zone in any number of locations with any number of randomly rolled quirks. 

As I read this book I will note that it engages with the more artsy "artpunk" style characteristic of Mork Borg and other Stockholm Kartel productions. It is, however, perfectly readable and nothing really poses an interpretation issue....the style informs the reader and player as you go along, and does a good job at it. For example, when you look at the character roles you will see that the skeptic's write-up looks like an online cluster of posts, while the vagabond is presented like a criminal history report, the soldier a Institute of Anomalous Studies referral, and the scientist a tablet file for review. Only the pilgrim is boring. Honestly, the only graphics issue at all is the preponderance of white font on black background on most pages, which can be an eye strain for some.

The System: At first glance Into the Zone looks like it's emulating a die-based mechanical process similar to Savage Worlds, but its a ruse! Don't believe it....its more insidious and weird than that. Yes, you assign die codes to your stats, which are muscle, prowess, smarts and grit and yes, those sound similar to some Savage Worlds stats.....but really your assigning letter ranks, which just correspond to die codes (Rank A = D6, Rank B = D8, etc.). And it gets better: your difficulty is always target #6. You need to beat it on two rolls, usually two stats (sometimes the same stat twice). Do you add these rolls, or do you pick the better of the two, which means lower in this case? I'm not 100% sure! I think you don't add them, unless you clearly do. It's not totally clear at all times. And yes, the system is roll under the target number! So a Rank E (D20) is positively abysmal, as you have higher odds of missing TN 6. That sweet spot at Rank A (D6) is what you want. 

This leads to some oddities, such as when the system tells you to improve your ability one step that means going, say, from letter grade C to B. Once you wrap your head around this part, and accept that other parts are going to be roll high (ex: when you panic, you make a stress test and try to avoid going over a 20+ on the roll after adding your stress level to a smarts+grit check).

The necessity of two dice on all rolls is an oddity to me. The exceptions where you total the dice instead of comparing them is an oddity in rules consistency. I may not even be right on whether or not you compare dice on tests or total them. It's not all clear at times. I suspect with a few patient players we could puzzle it out.....but to contrast, most of the other systems reviewed so far in this series were fairly intuitive once you discerned their intent, and were generally consistent with either sticking to roll high or roll low resolution mechanics.

That's not to knock Into the Zone though, I think its mechanical design is just fine....but maybe it needed a slight rewrite and a few extra sentences to clarify its intent. Combat rules are one page for example and aim for simplicity and speed as much as possible. 

The Setting: half the book is setting, which is defined in a "roll and improv" approach with tables for artifacts, anomalies, afflictions, stress and panic results, equipment, resources, encounters, and mixed in are some details on effects of exposure on excursions, a page of creatures (10), setting up a cordon (the base of operations stalkers...er, zoners? can return to), and in the back surprisingly is an example of play and two dense pages of GM advice on running the game.

The setting is pretty simple, from the ultra narrow focus of SF about well-armed survivalists going in to a mystery zone where something horrific has happened that does not have to be due to a nuclear accident (indeed, a chart lets you figure out what it might be or is rumored to be, and can include everything from aliens to a "paracausal awakening.") The players play the stalkers, who go in to the wilderness and stalk things in the zone, looking for arifacts, wealth, power or truth depending on what their focus is (the aforementioned pilgrims, soldiers, scientists, vagabonds and skeptics). Playing some "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl," Metro: Exodus or watching the movie Stalker might give you the level of focus you need to make this plot happen. It does look to me like there's enough procedural chart-rolled content for a GM to pretty much run from the book with no real clue as to plot direction, going "improv" the whole way.

Supplements: I don't see any support content for Into the Zone anywhere, though while searching I learned of an unrelated solo game of the same name, as well as Enter the Zone which I grabbed in print. It's a shame, this book could use a formal campaign/scenario expansion to help new GMs out.

Who is this for? Well, if you like the inspirational source material this game might be a no-brainer. That said, I am not 100% on board with the game's system as written....it has some unclear bits, and seems a bit cumbersome for a rules lite system. I could easily see using this as a chart/scenario resource for exactly this sort of campaign using some other game system, though. Maybe BRP or GURPS for more complex systems, or just use the charts here as an adaptation to Mothership or CY_BORG. I guess sure, I could run it as-is, too, and let that play attempt inform my judgement on it. 

If you have no idea of the Stalker subgenre however, this might seem a bit weird and dense to you. Still....if you are like me and you loved the movie and book Annihilation, you may notice some worthy content here for consideration.

Humble THQ Bundle

Usually they're Humble INDIE Bundles, but it turns out the Humble Bundle system can work for big publishers in serious financial trouble, as well. Either way, this is an amazingly good deal, and I wish I didn't own all of these games already. Instead, I point it out to those of you who might not already own all of these games (going for 5.60 as of the time I write this):

Metro 2033 (Best Russian post-apocalyptic shooter/adventure out there)

Titan Quest (an aging but very good hack and slasher that kept the torch burning during the dark years between Diablo II and Diablo III)

Saints Row The Third (you know how much I love this off-beat parody of the GTA Sandbox style games)

Three Company of Heroes Titles (okay I don't own these but I don't play RTS's either)

Red Faction: Armageddon (and it's DLC pack; a decent if unoriginal alien space marine shooter accidentally grafted onto a setting known more for being a "humans on Mars with hammers and highly destructible environments" style of game, thus why it flopped)

Darksiders (a game that many people seem to like but which I was unable to personally get any joy out of)

And a bunch of soundtracks.

Six days left as of 12/6/12....$5.60....hard to beat!

Steam Box? Also: The fine art of focused storytelling vs. the problem with sandboxes; or, Metro 2033 vs. Dead Island

 First off, this story has me interested: apparently there's more than a little reason to believe that Valve is looking at a dedicated PC design with console features. At first I was thinking, "whatever, I've got my PC at home already," but I concede a few ideas sprung up which make the concept more tantalizing. Notably:

More games that normally only see life on consoles could come to a dedicated "Steam Box," as the design intent behind a console (dedicated architecture) would hopefully lure some of these console-only designers over to offering up ports on a Steam Box. And no I am not a PC elitist who likes to bitch about "console babies." There are plenty of console-only games out there I'd love to be able to play without buying a Wii or PS3. Unfortunately it probably won't help with the 1st party releases designed to sell systems (Gears of War, Halo...the two I care about in this case) but maybe games that normally never see life on the PC would get a chance this way. Maybe. (And also probably a flood of console shovelware too, I am sure...)

It would open up my Steam account to a console that is optimized for sitting on my comfy sofa couch in front of my 55 inch screen TV. Admittedly, I can hook my PC up to my big screen TV right now and play games, but I've found that this experience is not at satisfying as simply playing with the Xbox on the big screen (and don't even try to get any real work done this way!) So for the sake of design and convenience, why not.

It might have a chance of dethroning Microsoft and Sony from their console pillars. I'd like to see that just for the hell of it.

In Mother Russia, Pip Boy Wear You!

Okay! So anyway, as of today I am at last 92% finished (according the the little meter) in Dead Island. By the time this sees print I should be done with it and probably experiencing the agony of poor design that is allegedly found in the Ryder White DLC. We'll see. I also finished Metro 2033 this weekend, even with a baby sitting on my knee staring intensely at the screen while I blew up dark one amoebas (and crying ceaselessly if I tried to put him down; I have no idea why this kid was so fascinated at watching Metro 2033, a game I felt rather nervous about playing with him even being in the same room. Hmmmm definitely my child, though)

Dead Island and Metro 2033 are both amazing games. Both have some weaknesses, but their strengths overcome those, for the most part. Moreover, I look forward to the sequels, because unless suits and marketing start meddling in these games the sequels should only get better. But it was interesting to realize that Metro 2033 was ultimately a more satisfying experience, albeit frustrating at times, if only because it was semi-linear (providing linear levels, but with a modest range of options in how to complete each level) and as a result Metro 2033 was able to focus heavily on mood, atmosphere and integrated story telling. When I got to the end of Metro 2033 I felt like I had experienced a meaningful and coherent story arc.

Although I won't be done with Dead Island until tonight, I have to say that the game's efforts at atmosphere and immersion, while excellent, nonetheless began to wear on me toward the end. The game did mix it up....just when I was starting to think that the second act in the city would never, ever end, suddenly I'm in the Jungle, and then I'm in a research facility, and next thing I know I'm exploring ancient Maori cults on the island. Despite this, and perhaps because of the finsl prison level, I still felt like the game's sole purpose was to exhaust the hell out of me while keeping me in a perpetual state of mild confusion. I think it's because while the game's efforts at creating a sort of sandbox zombie apocalypse environment for me to explore are impressive to experience, I absorbed almost all of that ambience and got my fill of it in the first 12-15 hours of the game, before I'd even penetrated the second act. So by the time I reached the fourth act, I had lost any connection to the "setting immersion" element it had early on, and was no firmly wrapped up in the "gameplay element" which honestly gets a bit redundant. See zombies. Kick them down, hack them up, move to next group, click on quest goal, repeat.

Also, Dead Island could have benefited from not having constant, unending respawns MMO-style...

It doesn't help that Dead Island's ability to tell a story is a shoddy mess. The vast plethora of side quests are, while appropriately narrated, almost entirely disconnected from the player character and consist almost exclusively of fetch quests, occasional escort quests, and periodic "clean up" quests, all thematically at odds with the ragtag gang of four that the story is supposedly about. Of the four possible player characters, only the asian gal really strikes me as a "do-gooder," the other three are hard-as-nails amoral survivors with personal agendas that never really get directly addressed throughout the storyline. Worse yet, whenever the game does have a major cutscene or story event, apparently Dead Island was designed under the expectation that at all times you would have all four characters represented, so these storylines are jarring when you see all four protagonists engaging in discourse about a situation or taking action, then the cutscene ends and its back to just you in a solo run or maybe one or two other co-opers.

Despite the lack of coherence in the storyline, and despite the fact that every damned side quest in the game is an annoying and irrelevant sidetrek that only the most lawful good of paladins would bother with ordinarily, Dead Island does have a story, and its a rather interesting one when taken as a whole; the problem is that the developers of this game clearly are not used to the optimal way to stitch together a coherent plotline in a sandbox environment. I'm no authority on the GTA series of games, but it does seem to me that Rockstar has this sort of approach down to a science. Just play Red Dead Redemption for an example of how to do this very well. In fact, for a full-on zombie experience with coherent storytelling get the Undead Nightmare DLC for some wild west zombie action, too...

So in the end, Metro 2033 was much shorter than Dead Island, but was rewarded with a more focused and coherent storyline and an experience that never got old because it used its set pieces and interesting bits to great effect. Dead Island in turns has felt like someone did not edit a film, and instead released several dozens' of hours of raw footage through which I have been methodically watching, at once fascinated, bored, energized and irritated with occasional brilliant moments shining through.

Carmen Sandiego, Where Are You?!?!?!?