It's been a while since I mentioned Amazing Adventures, what with my predilection for distraction and all, but I wanted to mention that this is A Real Thing and that if you are into pulp adventure gaming you should check out AA. It's built on the Castles & Crusades SIEGE Engine, and introduces pulp 30's adventure into the mix. As a game about pulp action its great, with old school mechanics layered on a genre savvy presentation of the pulp era. Even if you only love fantasy gaming, getting Amazing Adventuers could facilitate that awesome Steampunk Fantasy campaign you might want to run with C&C.
Anyway, you can read about it at Elf Lair Games here and view the Kickstarter here.
I'm keen to have a hard cover edition of AA and also like the idea of the "Manual of Monsters" as well. so I'll go in on the $45 level. Even though my fantasy gaming is dominated by D&D 5E these days, which fills my much needed spot for fantasy gaming, I believe that AA is a great resource for pulp gaming and like what is being proposed here. Even better, Jason Vey and the Trolls are good for it: they always deliver.
Here are some site links on AA:
The Realms of Chirak review/overview of Amazing Adventures
Making a Rocket Man adventurer in Amazing Adventures
Showing posts with label amazing adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amazing adventures. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Amazing Adventures: James Cash, the Explosive Rocketman!
As an example of Amazing Adventures character creation, I'm going to create a sample character with a bit of history to show off what the system lets you do. Yes, AA is a D20 spin-off with class-based mechanics, but it's got some pretty nifty features as far as its breed goes, and here's a sample of how that works:
Meet James Cash, the Explosive Rocketman
James Cash began his career as a daredevil stuntman in the Hollywood of late 1929, known primarily for his role in cheap action serials as "Daredevil Dan, the Singing Detective Cowboy," but his role as a real adventurer didn't begin until one fateful evening when he was invited to a glitzy party at the Wollerman Mansion in the Hollywood Hills. There he was unexpectedly thrust into a web of deceit, lies and treachery when he arrived at the party and found Marvin Wollerman, Hollywood mogul, under gunpoint by hooligans working for the famed Doctor Anthony Sevarius, a well known mad scientist who had been ousted from his profession for unethical practices a few years earlier, and was now working with local mobsters to unknown ends.
It turns out that Marvin Wollerman was secretly the (now retired) former Captain Skyfall, famous American vigilante and hero who worked against the fascist menace in The Great War some ten years earlier. He was forced to retire from duty as a covert agent of the United Stats due to a crippling injury to his back from the secret forces of agent Kaiser Wilhelm II during the final days of the war. Still, Wollerman was resourceful, and had built many fabulous gadgets since, including the exoskeletal framework which let him walk in public.
The goons holding him up were rapidly dispatched by a fast-acting hard-punching James Cash, who earned the respect of the party-goers and the police who arrived to mop up. More importantly, Wollerman realized that Cash was the sort of man he could appreciate, the kind who could carry on a legacy....after the event, Wollerman invited Cash into his parlor, and made a proposal: take up the mantle of his old guise, armed with the many gadgets and devices Wollerman had built over the years to aid him in his duties as secret agent for the U.S., and carry on the good fight. More importantly: find out what Doctor Sevarius wanted, and shut him down!
Cash, naturally, could not refuse the offer. Especially not when he saw Wollerman's greatest invention yet, the flying rocket suit...and thus was born the Explosive Rocketman, as the press would come to call Hollywood's latest mysterious vigilante of the skies!
Rolling up James Cash
Amazing Adventures gives you a point pool to design PCs with (you can roll if you want, too). I'm going to point buy James Cash for maximum focus; each stat starts at 6 and I get a pool of 45 points to distribute. Right now I see him as a bit of a pugilist and a gadgeteer rolled into one, so multiclassing may be in his future. For now, I assign his stats as follows:
Strength 14 - Cash is tough and strong, but not muscle bound.
Dexterity 14 - I see Cash as very agile, he needs to be in his line of work.
Constitution 18 - Years of work in the stuntman business has hardened Cash to pain and injury.
Intelligence 11 - Cash is above average, but not a brainiac.
Wisdom 9 - Cash has some good intuition, as he needs it in his line of work, but he's no Socrates.
Charisma 15 - Cash is loaded with charisma; its why he makes the Saturday adventure serials!
AA's modifiers for stats is the same point spread you see in C&C, LL, S&W and others, so he has the following stats: STR 14 (+1), DEX (14 (+1), CON 18 (+3), INT 11 (0), WIS 9 (0), CHA 15 (+1). Okay, so no below average stats, he's all around above average or better. Soaking hits is his big score.
Cash gets three primes. We're gonna make them Charisma, Constitution, and Dexterity. He's noted for his good looks and charm, his toughness and his agility. In AA, this gives you a +5 modifier to challenge checks, which are a base DC 15 (so the AA universe is ranked slightly off from conventional C&C).
James is destined to be a gadgeteer, but I really see him being strong as a pugilist, to reflect his years as a stuntman. In AA there is an official multiclassing option which looks a lot like C&C's rules (4th crusade edition onward) and an optional version that looks a bit like 3rd edition D20's methodology. As intrigued as I am at the alternating class level option, I'll stick with the official multiclass option for now, making Cash a level 1/1 gadgeteer/pugilist.
Multiclassed characters have a formula for calculating XP gain which I won't go into, but the short version is "figure it out and write it down." They also gain all class abilities, weapons and armor permitted, and an average of the two classes' hit dice and hit bonuses.
After adding in class abilities and combining them accordingly I get the following:
Hit Points: 12 (6 for gadgeteer plus 12 for pugilist, averaged out, plus Con Mod; note that after this he will roll D12 and D6 for each and get the average at each new level)
Base to Hit Modifier: 0 (neither class gets a bonus at level 1)
Base Gadgeteer Abilities: Support Gadgeteer (he gets his gadgets from Wollerman), making his prime Charisma. He starts with 1D6+1+Charisma mod. in gadget points but I'm going to cheat and max him out with 8 points. More on this in a sec. He also gets Jury Rig, an intelligence-based skill which reflects a general handiness with machinery and fixing things.
Base Pugilist Abilities: At 1st level a pugilist gets nothing exciting; most of that stuff comes later in the class. He does get an unarmed attack damage of 1D4 (instead of 1D3) and Mind over Body (+1 to Con saves). Pugilists at level 1 are basically living for the future.
Alignment: I think we'll go with lawful good on this. James Cash is a lawful sort of guy, and good runs in his blood.
Fate Points: Yes, there are fate points (hero points, action points...save your butt points). You start with 1D4+1. I roll and get....3 fate points to start.
Building Gadgets: James is a charisma-based gadgeteer, so he wears and uses stuff his support man makes. This is a tougher role for the gadgeteer, because you lose the ability to make on-the-fly gadgets, and you can possibly lose your support if they are shot, kidnapped or otherwise removed from your access. The plus side is slightly reduced cost in making gadgets. At first level the suggestion is to let the gadgeteer buy level 0 or 1 gadgets, and one higher level gadget. Obviously we're going to make a rocket pack, so we'll start there. Here's what we work out:
Rocket Pack (Fly, cost: 4); We've got our rocket pack, which gets Cash around at a hefty clip. It's reasonably portable, and we'll say its bulky but can slim down to fit in a hiker's backpack if necessary. Cash can lift the equivalent of his normal maximum load in flight as well as himself while he is airborn (which for the record is 140 lbs. or even potentially 210 lbs. dead-lifted, for a few seconds).
We've got 4 points left after that. This is enough to get two level 1 gadgets, four level 0 gadgets or a mixture. We'll go for something a bit complex, the "Rocketman Pistol." The rules don't (that I've spotted) specifically talk about combined gadgets but I see no reason not to allow it here:
Rocketman Pistol (Light, Dancing Lights, Arcane Bolt; Total Cost 4); this impressive pistol has three settings: it can project as a ordinary but very effective flashlight (light), can emit four glowing electrical balls of plasma to illuminate the region (dancing lights), and it can fire arcs of force energy at targets to injure or even kill (arcane bolt). Wollerman has future intentions (when more gadget points are earned) to add a chafe effect (faerie fire) and stun setting (daze).
Swapping class abilities is next. There's one ability I don't think hits Cash well: his Jury Rigging. Cash isn't a technical guy, and Wollerman is the man for the job in designing the gadgets, so I see Cash as more likely to have something that fits his background here. Looking at the abilities at hand I find two that feel handy: Two Fisted (punch with both hands) and Wealthy. Wealthy is an appropriate swap for Jury Rig, so we'll take that instead, reflecting Cash's accrued wealth as a stuntman and his newfound resources through his patron, Wollerman.
Next we come to Backgrounds. The background can be picked based on character type, or rolled randomly. There's no specific suggested background that fits, so we'll invent one: professional stuntman. In addition we get some knowledge skills, specifically kowledge (gadgeteer) and knowledge (pugilist). Knowledge skills are a lot like the D20 variant, but some good guidelines here will help more traditional OSR GMs with adjudicating how this skill works.
Next we have traits. Characters can start with two traits, which provide both benefits and drawbacks. With my vision of Cash two traits immediately look appropriate: the brawler and reckless. Brawler however is for non-pugilists who want a bit of the fight in them; this might be a good choice if I was rolling a pure gadgeteer with a touch of fisticuffs in his blood, so I instead go for aggressive. Cole is a man of action and being aggressive gives him a +2 initiative bonus at the expense of a -1 to AC.
After reading up on reckless I think it would be a bit of a hindrance (bonus to damage, penalty to hit) and would overlook some non-combat opportunities for character development. I go with polite, instead; he's polite and friendly to a fault, gaining a +1 bonus to diplomatic charisma checks but at the penalty of -2 to charisma checks to intimidate.
We're not finished yet, though! Cole has a sanity score (ripped right from the pages of CoC D20) and that score is 45 (WisX5). Hoookay. Lets hope Cash fights mostly fascists and mad scientists, and fewer cthonic beings from beyond the veil of space and time!
I did run into one oddity in design: in AA pulp armor is by suit piece, so you could get an armor bonus for wearing a bomber jacket, fedora, gloves and even a scarf. However, my choice of classes has limited what James can secure: his gadgeteer options aren't quite in sync with my vision of a bomber jacket wearing dude, and his pugilist options are effectively none, so I guess I'll just deal with it. Ultimately I think this means that my vision of James includes him wearing some sort of flight jacket....it just doesn't happen to be very effective at stopping blows.
James Cash is now complete!
James Cash, Alias the Explosive Rocketman
Level 1/1 Pugilist/Gadgeteer; Alignment LG; Background: career stuntman
STR 14 (+1), DEX 14 (+1)/P, CON 18 (+3)/P, INT 11 (0), WIS 9 (0), CHA 15 (+1)/P
Hit Points: 12; Base to Hit Modifier: 0 Sanity: 45; Base AC: 10 (+1 Dex, -1 trait); Fate Pts: 3
Traits: Aggressive (+2 Init, -1 AC), Polite (+1 diplomacy, -2 intimidate)
Knowledge Skills: kowledge (pugilist), knowledge (gadgeteer)
Gadgeteer Abilities: Support Gadgeteer (Cha), Wealth (swapped with Jury Rig), Mind over Body (+1 to Con saves)
Pugilist Abilities: unarmed attack damage of 1D4
Gadgets: Rocket Pack (Fly, cost: 4); Rocketman Pistol (Light, Dancing Lights, Arcane Bolt; Total Cost 4)
In time he will gain new gadgets, including a fancy helmet and maybe even some bullet proof sort of flight suit....but for now, he's got his trusty jetpack and his unique pistol!
Notes
I thought about retconning the pugilist class entirely, but I like the idea of him swooping down and punching fascists in the face. To demonstrate the long term advantages for this multiclasser:
Level 2: Base unarmored AC jumps to 11, unarmed strike become 1D6 damage, Down and Dirty which grants a +1 to all grapple, escape and overbear foes, and also adds to opposed Str and Con rolls. He also gets his first +1 BtH. As a gadgeteer he gains 2 gadget points (enough to buy a new level 1 effect). His hit points go up an average of 8 this level to around 20.
Level 3: Unarmed AC jumps to 12 and he gets fast movement. As a gadgeteer he gains 3 more gadget points (enough for a level 2 gadget). His BtH will go to +2 (assuming you average and round up). His hit points will be somewhere around 28.
By higher levels he'll look suspiciously like a rocket powered monk from C&C in many regards. Except this monk will supplement his fists of fury with terrifying, instantly reusable devices that do terrible terrible things...
Meet James Cash, the Explosive Rocketman
James Cash began his career as a daredevil stuntman in the Hollywood of late 1929, known primarily for his role in cheap action serials as "Daredevil Dan, the Singing Detective Cowboy," but his role as a real adventurer didn't begin until one fateful evening when he was invited to a glitzy party at the Wollerman Mansion in the Hollywood Hills. There he was unexpectedly thrust into a web of deceit, lies and treachery when he arrived at the party and found Marvin Wollerman, Hollywood mogul, under gunpoint by hooligans working for the famed Doctor Anthony Sevarius, a well known mad scientist who had been ousted from his profession for unethical practices a few years earlier, and was now working with local mobsters to unknown ends.
It turns out that Marvin Wollerman was secretly the (now retired) former Captain Skyfall, famous American vigilante and hero who worked against the fascist menace in The Great War some ten years earlier. He was forced to retire from duty as a covert agent of the United Stats due to a crippling injury to his back from the secret forces of agent Kaiser Wilhelm II during the final days of the war. Still, Wollerman was resourceful, and had built many fabulous gadgets since, including the exoskeletal framework which let him walk in public.
The goons holding him up were rapidly dispatched by a fast-acting hard-punching James Cash, who earned the respect of the party-goers and the police who arrived to mop up. More importantly, Wollerman realized that Cash was the sort of man he could appreciate, the kind who could carry on a legacy....after the event, Wollerman invited Cash into his parlor, and made a proposal: take up the mantle of his old guise, armed with the many gadgets and devices Wollerman had built over the years to aid him in his duties as secret agent for the U.S., and carry on the good fight. More importantly: find out what Doctor Sevarius wanted, and shut him down!
Cash, naturally, could not refuse the offer. Especially not when he saw Wollerman's greatest invention yet, the flying rocket suit...and thus was born the Explosive Rocketman, as the press would come to call Hollywood's latest mysterious vigilante of the skies!
Rolling up James Cash
Amazing Adventures gives you a point pool to design PCs with (you can roll if you want, too). I'm going to point buy James Cash for maximum focus; each stat starts at 6 and I get a pool of 45 points to distribute. Right now I see him as a bit of a pugilist and a gadgeteer rolled into one, so multiclassing may be in his future. For now, I assign his stats as follows:
Strength 14 - Cash is tough and strong, but not muscle bound.
Dexterity 14 - I see Cash as very agile, he needs to be in his line of work.
Constitution 18 - Years of work in the stuntman business has hardened Cash to pain and injury.
Intelligence 11 - Cash is above average, but not a brainiac.
Wisdom 9 - Cash has some good intuition, as he needs it in his line of work, but he's no Socrates.
Charisma 15 - Cash is loaded with charisma; its why he makes the Saturday adventure serials!
AA's modifiers for stats is the same point spread you see in C&C, LL, S&W and others, so he has the following stats: STR 14 (+1), DEX (14 (+1), CON 18 (+3), INT 11 (0), WIS 9 (0), CHA 15 (+1). Okay, so no below average stats, he's all around above average or better. Soaking hits is his big score.
Cash gets three primes. We're gonna make them Charisma, Constitution, and Dexterity. He's noted for his good looks and charm, his toughness and his agility. In AA, this gives you a +5 modifier to challenge checks, which are a base DC 15 (so the AA universe is ranked slightly off from conventional C&C).
James is destined to be a gadgeteer, but I really see him being strong as a pugilist, to reflect his years as a stuntman. In AA there is an official multiclassing option which looks a lot like C&C's rules (4th crusade edition onward) and an optional version that looks a bit like 3rd edition D20's methodology. As intrigued as I am at the alternating class level option, I'll stick with the official multiclass option for now, making Cash a level 1/1 gadgeteer/pugilist.
Multiclassed characters have a formula for calculating XP gain which I won't go into, but the short version is "figure it out and write it down." They also gain all class abilities, weapons and armor permitted, and an average of the two classes' hit dice and hit bonuses.
After adding in class abilities and combining them accordingly I get the following:
Hit Points: 12 (6 for gadgeteer plus 12 for pugilist, averaged out, plus Con Mod; note that after this he will roll D12 and D6 for each and get the average at each new level)
Base to Hit Modifier: 0 (neither class gets a bonus at level 1)
Base Gadgeteer Abilities: Support Gadgeteer (he gets his gadgets from Wollerman), making his prime Charisma. He starts with 1D6+1+Charisma mod. in gadget points but I'm going to cheat and max him out with 8 points. More on this in a sec. He also gets Jury Rig, an intelligence-based skill which reflects a general handiness with machinery and fixing things.
Base Pugilist Abilities: At 1st level a pugilist gets nothing exciting; most of that stuff comes later in the class. He does get an unarmed attack damage of 1D4 (instead of 1D3) and Mind over Body (+1 to Con saves). Pugilists at level 1 are basically living for the future.
Alignment: I think we'll go with lawful good on this. James Cash is a lawful sort of guy, and good runs in his blood.
Fate Points: Yes, there are fate points (hero points, action points...save your butt points). You start with 1D4+1. I roll and get....3 fate points to start.
Building Gadgets: James is a charisma-based gadgeteer, so he wears and uses stuff his support man makes. This is a tougher role for the gadgeteer, because you lose the ability to make on-the-fly gadgets, and you can possibly lose your support if they are shot, kidnapped or otherwise removed from your access. The plus side is slightly reduced cost in making gadgets. At first level the suggestion is to let the gadgeteer buy level 0 or 1 gadgets, and one higher level gadget. Obviously we're going to make a rocket pack, so we'll start there. Here's what we work out:
Rocket Pack (Fly, cost: 4); We've got our rocket pack, which gets Cash around at a hefty clip. It's reasonably portable, and we'll say its bulky but can slim down to fit in a hiker's backpack if necessary. Cash can lift the equivalent of his normal maximum load in flight as well as himself while he is airborn (which for the record is 140 lbs. or even potentially 210 lbs. dead-lifted, for a few seconds).
We've got 4 points left after that. This is enough to get two level 1 gadgets, four level 0 gadgets or a mixture. We'll go for something a bit complex, the "Rocketman Pistol." The rules don't (that I've spotted) specifically talk about combined gadgets but I see no reason not to allow it here:
Rocketman Pistol (Light, Dancing Lights, Arcane Bolt; Total Cost 4); this impressive pistol has three settings: it can project as a ordinary but very effective flashlight (light), can emit four glowing electrical balls of plasma to illuminate the region (dancing lights), and it can fire arcs of force energy at targets to injure or even kill (arcane bolt). Wollerman has future intentions (when more gadget points are earned) to add a chafe effect (faerie fire) and stun setting (daze).
Swapping class abilities is next. There's one ability I don't think hits Cash well: his Jury Rigging. Cash isn't a technical guy, and Wollerman is the man for the job in designing the gadgets, so I see Cash as more likely to have something that fits his background here. Looking at the abilities at hand I find two that feel handy: Two Fisted (punch with both hands) and Wealthy. Wealthy is an appropriate swap for Jury Rig, so we'll take that instead, reflecting Cash's accrued wealth as a stuntman and his newfound resources through his patron, Wollerman.
Next we come to Backgrounds. The background can be picked based on character type, or rolled randomly. There's no specific suggested background that fits, so we'll invent one: professional stuntman. In addition we get some knowledge skills, specifically kowledge (gadgeteer) and knowledge (pugilist). Knowledge skills are a lot like the D20 variant, but some good guidelines here will help more traditional OSR GMs with adjudicating how this skill works.
Next we have traits. Characters can start with two traits, which provide both benefits and drawbacks. With my vision of Cash two traits immediately look appropriate: the brawler and reckless. Brawler however is for non-pugilists who want a bit of the fight in them; this might be a good choice if I was rolling a pure gadgeteer with a touch of fisticuffs in his blood, so I instead go for aggressive. Cole is a man of action and being aggressive gives him a +2 initiative bonus at the expense of a -1 to AC.
After reading up on reckless I think it would be a bit of a hindrance (bonus to damage, penalty to hit) and would overlook some non-combat opportunities for character development. I go with polite, instead; he's polite and friendly to a fault, gaining a +1 bonus to diplomatic charisma checks but at the penalty of -2 to charisma checks to intimidate.
We're not finished yet, though! Cole has a sanity score (ripped right from the pages of CoC D20) and that score is 45 (WisX5). Hoookay. Lets hope Cash fights mostly fascists and mad scientists, and fewer cthonic beings from beyond the veil of space and time!
I did run into one oddity in design: in AA pulp armor is by suit piece, so you could get an armor bonus for wearing a bomber jacket, fedora, gloves and even a scarf. However, my choice of classes has limited what James can secure: his gadgeteer options aren't quite in sync with my vision of a bomber jacket wearing dude, and his pugilist options are effectively none, so I guess I'll just deal with it. Ultimately I think this means that my vision of James includes him wearing some sort of flight jacket....it just doesn't happen to be very effective at stopping blows.
James Cash is now complete!
James Cash, Alias the Explosive Rocketman
Level 1/1 Pugilist/Gadgeteer; Alignment LG; Background: career stuntman
STR 14 (+1), DEX 14 (+1)/P, CON 18 (+3)/P, INT 11 (0), WIS 9 (0), CHA 15 (+1)/P
Hit Points: 12; Base to Hit Modifier: 0 Sanity: 45; Base AC: 10 (+1 Dex, -1 trait); Fate Pts: 3
Traits: Aggressive (+2 Init, -1 AC), Polite (+1 diplomacy, -2 intimidate)
Knowledge Skills: kowledge (pugilist), knowledge (gadgeteer)
Gadgeteer Abilities: Support Gadgeteer (Cha), Wealth (swapped with Jury Rig), Mind over Body (+1 to Con saves)
Pugilist Abilities: unarmed attack damage of 1D4
Gadgets: Rocket Pack (Fly, cost: 4); Rocketman Pistol (Light, Dancing Lights, Arcane Bolt; Total Cost 4)
In time he will gain new gadgets, including a fancy helmet and maybe even some bullet proof sort of flight suit....but for now, he's got his trusty jetpack and his unique pistol!
Notes
I thought about retconning the pugilist class entirely, but I like the idea of him swooping down and punching fascists in the face. To demonstrate the long term advantages for this multiclasser:
Level 2: Base unarmored AC jumps to 11, unarmed strike become 1D6 damage, Down and Dirty which grants a +1 to all grapple, escape and overbear foes, and also adds to opposed Str and Con rolls. He also gets his first +1 BtH. As a gadgeteer he gains 2 gadget points (enough to buy a new level 1 effect). His hit points go up an average of 8 this level to around 20.
Level 3: Unarmed AC jumps to 12 and he gets fast movement. As a gadgeteer he gains 3 more gadget points (enough for a level 2 gadget). His BtH will go to +2 (assuming you average and round up). His hit points will be somewhere around 28.
By higher levels he'll look suspiciously like a rocket powered monk from C&C in many regards. Except this monk will supplement his fists of fury with terrifying, instantly reusable devices that do terrible terrible things...
Monday, February 4, 2013
Digging into Amazing Adventures: Pulp Characters
Amazing Adventures is the latest SIEGE Engine to spin off from Castles & Crusades. Prior to this release we have StarSIEGE, Tainted Lands (more of a C&C campaign setting but with a slim mini-rulebook included), and a kid's game called "Harvest" -something (no longer up on their storefront) involving anthropomorphic animals.
The core conceit of the SIEGE mechanics is as follows:
1. It's based on the D20 OGL (so roll a D20 and add something to resolve all tasks)
2. Characters get their six stats, each of which provides a modifier.
3. You designate certain stats as "primes" which means you get a bonus on your skill, save or action checks (which have a target number called a challenge class) related to those particular attributes designated as primes. In Amazing Adventures, you get three primes, and each prime gives you a +5 modifier to challenges. Challenge classes are a base DC 15. This goes up or down based on character level (added when using a class skill/ability), the challenge level (CL), and other factors. Most of the time these are pretty swift calculations.
Got that? Okay that's the SIEGE Engine in a nutshell. Everything else is crusty detritus surrounding the chewy inner core.
Amazing Adventures (AA) provides a pulp toolkit rule book using these mechanics to let players and gamemasters design pulp action adventures based on the serial films and fiction of the 20's, 30's and 40's. It's heavy on the rocket packs and light on the dragons and maidens....although it is fully compatible with C&C, so you can mix and match if you so desire.
Perhaps as a caveat to the author's tastes, or perhaps because its a product derived from a fantasy RPG that is in turn the bastard child of yet another fantasy RPG, AA has a lot of magic in the book. The first two classes in AA are the arcanist and the gadgeteer. The arcanist is a triple class-in-one, a sorcerer supreme, or a mad cultist, or an illusionist maestro. It's the basic concept of the cleric, illusionist and wizard all rolled into one, depending on which prime stat you pick to govern your magical talent.
Arcanists
Arcanists get a resource called Manna Energy Points (MEP) which are used to power spells. As is traditional for retroclones and retro-inspirationals, characters don't just pay points and cast from an arsenal of spells, they have to memorize them in slots; rather than using slots to "pay" for spells like in C&C and D&D, the slots for AA are what's "in mind" and the expenditure of power is tracked with MEP. MEP is also gained at each level, albeit with a random D10 roll, so an unlucky arcanist could have a very low range of MEP over time. A GM who wants a low-magic setting without excluding it could arbitrarily raise or lower the min/max MEP gained per level, too.
Arcanists are a basic class, the core conceit of which is that he's able to cast magic, but the exact flavor depends on what the player wants or the campaign demands. Choosing the prime attribute (intelligence, wisdom or charisma) changes the flavor of the character as well. Beyond that, the only other real class detail is a familiarity with arcane lore. Customizing the class comes later, in the second section of AA, where we learn about generic class abilities.
Gadgeteers
Gadgeteer as a class is a catch-all for the guy with a lot of equipment that he seems able to pull out at a moment's notice. There are two flavors of gadgeteer: the guy who has someone else provide him with stuff (Batman, the Rocketeer) and the guy who does it all himself on the fly (The Shadow or The Green Hornet, maybe).
Gadgeteers get a number of build points that they spend on and tie up in their gadgetry. The first oddball "glitch" I ran into with AA was here, although its not a big one, necessarily; a player spends gadget points to buy "spells" which he then defines as a physical object (description left up to player and GM to hash out). Sometimes they are temporary (spent on the fly) and sometimes they are permanent. You recover gadget points spent on temporary devices.
A gadgeteer can only ever make on the fly gadgets that emulate zero level spells. There's not a lot of guidance on how, say, a prestidigitation gadget might work, or a mage hand gadget....is it literally functioning like the spell, or just mechanically? This is, admittedly, an old-school territory where such interpretations are up to the GM and the player to negotiate, but I personally would have been very happy if each spell entry had included a short description of what its gadget equivalent might look like.
Gumshoes
The gumshoe is a bag of messy tricks, including climbing, investigation, revolver tricks, punchy take-downs, and an attitude. The gumshoe is the first of several more conventional classes, with a standard suite of C&C style class skills. The gumshoe eventually earns a built-in adversary, a certitude that his daring deeds will earn the emnity of someone, regardless of how many ventilated hooligans he leaves in his wake.
If I were to equate this class to one from C&C, I'd identify it with the ranger.
Hooligans
Speaking of hooligans, here's the actual class. The counterpart to the gumshoe, the hooligan is the rogue of AA, a rough and tumble medley of all the grifters, thugs, mafia men and tough guys you see in the era of the pulps. His main distinguishing trait isn't really even a class feature, being that this class doesn't usually lend itself to a lawful nature. Hooligans are another conventional "class skill" style C&C build, with a range of features that include dirty fighting take-downs, sneak attacks, casing joints and other tropes of the archetype. Yes, they are the modernized iteration of the C&C rogue.
Mentalists
This is the first unique class to the game, one which looks nothing like what has come before in C&C. The mentalist earns psionic powers, which are gained at specific levels, and can function very much like class skills. The entire concept is a great use of the SIEGE style class building process, with some extremely customizable options. Forget pulp adventures for a second....this class has within it the nuggest of a great Psiworld style campaign, something really cool and unusual. I would feel strongly tempted to eliminate the arcanist class entirely in a pulp era setting, directing players instead to the mentalist (and getting rid of the arcanist will make the gadgeteer that much more useful and distinct, too).
The mentalist is a concept that I hope future C&C books also seek to explot; it's something that could work well in a number of genres and contexts.
Pugilists
The pugilist class is what happens when you rename the monk class. I mean, its not an exact translation, but fairly close. The pugilist might work well in some capacity to model the fist fighting pulp warriors of old....I'd throw some levels of this class on the Phantom and the Shadow, for example (and Batman circa 1938 definitely) so as you might imagine this class is useful for that part of the venn diagram where comics and pulps merge. That said, its a strong, focused build class aimed at making the pugilist better with his fists than anyone else.
Raiders
After the Mentalist we have raiders, those daring adventurers writ large by the likes of Doc Savage and Indiana Jones. The raider class is distinctly "pulp," not that the others aren't....it's a class that primarily exists in a specific frame of time and within the even more specific context of adventure fiction and film. Real world pot hunters and archaeologists are not nearly this exciting. Raiders have a medley of odd skills (cryptolinguist, disguise, climb, survival, traps, and a favored weapon) that just screams "Indiana Jones!"
Socialite
The bard...er....the socialite is a clever manipulator and inspirational cheerleader. It's basically a reskinned bard, but with a tone and feel aimed more for a saucy socialite madame than a guy with a lyre and sword.
Now for a few other points to address about how AA works:
Class/Level Mechanics: in case it wasn't already obvious, this is one of those games where you start at level 1 and accrue XP until you hit level 2 and so on. This means that the classes dole out abilities and perks (like better hit points, attack bonuses and such) by level. A system such as this will feel uncomfortable to someone used to a more organic system like Hero or GURPS. As an example, under these mechanics if you did, say, want to build a gadgeteer who was emulating the Rocketeer, you'd need to get him to at least high enough level to build a gadget that emulates the fly spell. Then you'd need to argue with the GM about whether or not "fly" properly models the kind of gadget you have in mind.
(correction! Per Jason, and as I will point out next article, you ignore level restrictions on gadgets at character creation)
Alignments: Yes, alignments are baked in, albeit they could be rendered optional for the most part if you so desired. The alignments feel out of place to me, so I admit I'd have preferred a more modernized morality/personality mechanic, but YMMV on this.
Class Customization Options: A lot of the core class concept gets modified by additional optional class skills that you can swap out (or even spell slots/gadget points). One could be forgiven for overlooking this when studying the class options, but its actually the "meat and potatoes" of what makes the book really interesting. There are a huge variety of class abilities, detached from the classes themselves, which you pay for in ability swaps. Your range of options are more diverse than just feats; you can take the pugilist, for example, add the myriad animal related feats to get a Tarzan-like dude. You can (unfortunately) take the arcanist or gadgeteer classes and decide you don't really want to be an arcanist or gadgeteer and use their spell slots and gadget points respectively to bulk up on all sorts of optional class abilities. It's a weird and cool system all at once, but like with gadgeteers earlier, there's going to be a necessary give-and-take between player and gamemaster to insure that this system is not abused.
HUGE GRIPE: unrelated to the system, but as I was writing this the pages of my brand new book started to fall out. What The Hell. This isn't Mongoose publishing, guys! Grrrrrrr. In their defense I have never had a Troll Lord Games book come apart before, but....grrrrr. Just. GRRRRRR!
Next: The rest of the game, some example character roll ups, and more. Unless the rest of the book completely comes apart on me.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Friday Meanderings - Amazing Adventures, Mass Effect Leviathan, Dead Space 3 and More
I haven't gotten my act together with regards to reporting/discussing some of the numerous RPGs I am reading through right now, but I'm working on it. Amazing Adventures is on the top of the list, as I plow through Jason Vey's take on the pulp genre, as powered by the SIEGE Engine. While the core conceit of the C&C-powered D20 mechanics are here at the heart of it all, AA has enough changes to make it stand out on its own. It's got some interesting design choices. I'm hoping to have some more detailed analysis of the system next week.
After a hiatus from Mass Effect 3 I have resumed the Leviathan DLC and picked up the Omega DLC. I've enjoyed Leviathan, despite two distinct hang-ups early on. Sometimes putting something aside for a while and coming back to it later lends clarity of vision to what needs to be done. Anyway, it's fun resuming the adventures of poor doomed Shepard once more. Still interested in seeing what Bioware Montreal's vision for the next Mass Effect is going to be...I enjoy being a non-toxic fan who actually appreciates the level of work it took to make these games, can you tell?
I also picked up Strike Suit Zero and the preorder for Skyrim Dragonborn DLC as birthday presents for myself. You know you're getting entrenched when two out of three of your purchases are just expansion content for existing games! As it is, Strike Suit Zero looks potentially interesting but the controls were terrible (for me, YMMV). I'm going to give it another shot when I feel the urge to experiment with customizing them to taste, but right now, despite the fact that SSZ harkens back to a day when we all loved Colony Wars and Free Lancer, it's control scheme feels nothing like them. I'm not someone who normally uses a joystick and traditional flight control schematics, though...and am also left handed, so maybe those are where my issues are coming from.
Skyrim is probably the game I really need to sink myself into next. I've only played a few hours of it according to Steam, and the game has been out for over a year, as well as the source of a great many internet memes. I'd like to have the campaign under my belt in time for the Elder Scrolls Online to arrive, as well (even if there's a thousand year gap between the two games).
I also picked up "Map Pack B" for Resident Evil 6. Not sure why, to be completionist, I guess (it was 160 Microsoft Points...$2, so cheap). I've played some RE6 multiplayer now, and while I enjoyed it (and was actually fairly engaged and even doing well) it didn't strike me as having the sort of legs the ME3 multiplayer (or even Max Payne 3 MP) has.
Outside of the above DLC packs and one indie game (SSZ) that got greenlighted, there's the looming specter of Dead Space 3. Some noise has been circulating about the in-game cash shop it apparently comes with. I may wait a few days until after the reviews are out to see just how much of an impact this cash shop feature has. It's yet another unwelcome boogie man from the EA monetization process, but one I'll happily ignore if its not "in your face" or built around a tedious in-game mechanic designed to encourage you to buy coins or items from them to avoid being punished by the game.
Dead Space 3 doesn't arrive until February 12th, so maybe I'll change my mind by then and grab it. We'll see. Two other games are on the horizon which I must get: Crysis 3 and Gears of War: Judgement. Man, I am such a mainstream gamer, aren't I? Dissing in the indies, buying into the big fully-monetized triple-A titles. Defending Bioware. Sigh.
I have Zero hipster cred!
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
RPG Firehose: The Stuff I'll be Reading and Playing in 2013
2013 has so far been better than average in terms of my outlook on the year ahead. I've cleaned out old stuff, and decided its time to bring in some new, fresh and interesting bits to grab my interest. I'm realizing I need to force myself to broaden my RPG habits a bit, move away from overdosing on fantasy as I have been for a few years now (and D&D-likes especially) in favor of a broader range of games. To that end, I just grabbed the following, and will discuss much more about them in the coming weeks:
SciFi20 is Quiklink's reimagining/revision to what was once called Traveller20 (T20), the D20 edition of Traveller that was part of the fantastic glut of D20 era games in the early 00's. I happened to like much about this particular iteration, and was tempted by the lure of a "all purpose" generic D20-based SF system, so I snagged the PDF bundle on RPGNow. I've loaded it on the Nexus for reading (and the Nexus has some very smooth apps for reading PDF files, by the way).
Getting the PDF of Dark Conspiracy is a bit of a cheat; I actually played a lot of Dark Conspiracy back in the early 90's, along with Cyberpunk 2020; together they were my go-to games for a while. I had long since given up my old books, but missed this game; it was well-written, and a lot of fun. By accident I discovered that Game Designers Workshop was mysteriously back in RPGNow and offering up scans of vintage products....including Dark Conspiracy 1st and 2nd edition, for purchase. I went ahead and snagged this in a bundle along with two newly written scenarios and the "collectors guide" PDFs they offer, which is pretty cool of them to do. I will probably get more. Anyway, I plan to revisit this game and will talk about the experience soon, as well. On top of all this, I subsequently discovered that the third edition of the game is already halfway through its release cycle for the core rules with Conspiracy Rules, the mechanics for the newest edition of the game. Sweet.
This one was discovered at random while browsing RPGNow for interesting RPGs, and after reading the description and some reviews I decided to buy the print+PDF package. It looks good on the PDF file, and I eagerly await the print on demand edition (a Birthday present to myself, heh). What's it about? Basically it's abount haunted space stations and scifi survival horror. As I read more I'll report further down the road.
Being on a roll in searching for interesting and random games on RPGNow I also snagged this one, a game about a forlorn land littered with the apocalyptic remnants of giant robots from long ago. The premise was tantalizing, the reviews were all filled with glorious praise, and after ordering the print+PDF bundle I am pleased to see that the PDF is optimized for tablet reading. Looking forward to exploring this one!
I picked up this horror system based on the text description alone, and the graphics also looked good. So far its a bit hard to say if I'm really going to like it or not....I'm a bit of an old crusty sort when it comes to horror RPGs (never recovered from the unholy trinity of CoC, Kult and Unknown Armies, which together define horror RPGs for me). Still, I'm reading through it and its two free scenario packs and will discuss it in the coming weeks.
I actually downloaded Novus a while ago but plan to explore it in more detail as part of my "discover new RPGs" project for the next few months. Novus is written by Tim Dugger and it has some specific roots in HARP (which in turn is a derivation of Rolemaster), but Novus is far enough removed from its inspirational predecessors that it actually looks really fun and interesting to me.
This was a shoe-in...a SIEGE-powered pulp adventure game? Hell yes, sign me up! I've been planning to get it for a while, snagged it via Discount Games (one of my favorite Ebay sellers) and am looking forward to checking it out. My print copy is on the way, but the PDF is also available here. I really hope this game has all the right bells and whistles for the genre, as I think the SIEGE mechanics could make for a great pulp system.
Maybe if Amazing Adventures succeeds it will motivate the Trolls to repackage Star Siege into a similar format...I think Star Siege suffered from its format and style a bit when it first came out, and the Trolls have gotten so much better at layout, design and editing on their products ever since.
Next up, not exactly a "new" system to me, but one I have wandered away from due to the prodigious size of the last couple editions' core rulebooks. Champions Complete is an experiment from Hero Games, apparently, a return to the days when one book could give you the rules and material for an entire genre. I hope this experiment succeeds, and that we can look forward to stand-alone editions of Fantasy Hero Complete and Space Hero Complete in the future. I'm not that up to speed on the 6th edition of Hero System, either, so this will still have some new surprises for me, as well. I picked this one up in print, but it is also available in PDF here.
I bought In Flames and its two sourcebooks a while back in print form but am including them in this as I would really like to finish reading the game and maybe even run it. A strange universe of transhumanism with overtones of voodoo mythology as the premise for a sort of "higher space" from which loa-like transhuman entities are cast out to do penance in the mundane realms of normal human space? Powered by the D6 Engine? Sign me up!
Anyway, I plan to pick up a few more new RPGs in the coming weeks, and will make 2013 my "year of new RPG exploration." Who knows, maybe I'll finally get a chance to play a few, too!
SciFi20 is Quiklink's reimagining/revision to what was once called Traveller20 (T20), the D20 edition of Traveller that was part of the fantastic glut of D20 era games in the early 00's. I happened to like much about this particular iteration, and was tempted by the lure of a "all purpose" generic D20-based SF system, so I snagged the PDF bundle on RPGNow. I've loaded it on the Nexus for reading (and the Nexus has some very smooth apps for reading PDF files, by the way).
Getting the PDF of Dark Conspiracy is a bit of a cheat; I actually played a lot of Dark Conspiracy back in the early 90's, along with Cyberpunk 2020; together they were my go-to games for a while. I had long since given up my old books, but missed this game; it was well-written, and a lot of fun. By accident I discovered that Game Designers Workshop was mysteriously back in RPGNow and offering up scans of vintage products....including Dark Conspiracy 1st and 2nd edition, for purchase. I went ahead and snagged this in a bundle along with two newly written scenarios and the "collectors guide" PDFs they offer, which is pretty cool of them to do. I will probably get more. Anyway, I plan to revisit this game and will talk about the experience soon, as well. On top of all this, I subsequently discovered that the third edition of the game is already halfway through its release cycle for the core rules with Conspiracy Rules, the mechanics for the newest edition of the game. Sweet.
This one was discovered at random while browsing RPGNow for interesting RPGs, and after reading the description and some reviews I decided to buy the print+PDF package. It looks good on the PDF file, and I eagerly await the print on demand edition (a Birthday present to myself, heh). What's it about? Basically it's abount haunted space stations and scifi survival horror. As I read more I'll report further down the road.
Being on a roll in searching for interesting and random games on RPGNow I also snagged this one, a game about a forlorn land littered with the apocalyptic remnants of giant robots from long ago. The premise was tantalizing, the reviews were all filled with glorious praise, and after ordering the print+PDF bundle I am pleased to see that the PDF is optimized for tablet reading. Looking forward to exploring this one!
I picked up this horror system based on the text description alone, and the graphics also looked good. So far its a bit hard to say if I'm really going to like it or not....I'm a bit of an old crusty sort when it comes to horror RPGs (never recovered from the unholy trinity of CoC, Kult and Unknown Armies, which together define horror RPGs for me). Still, I'm reading through it and its two free scenario packs and will discuss it in the coming weeks.
I actually downloaded Novus a while ago but plan to explore it in more detail as part of my "discover new RPGs" project for the next few months. Novus is written by Tim Dugger and it has some specific roots in HARP (which in turn is a derivation of Rolemaster), but Novus is far enough removed from its inspirational predecessors that it actually looks really fun and interesting to me.
This was a shoe-in...a SIEGE-powered pulp adventure game? Hell yes, sign me up! I've been planning to get it for a while, snagged it via Discount Games (one of my favorite Ebay sellers) and am looking forward to checking it out. My print copy is on the way, but the PDF is also available here. I really hope this game has all the right bells and whistles for the genre, as I think the SIEGE mechanics could make for a great pulp system.
Maybe if Amazing Adventures succeeds it will motivate the Trolls to repackage Star Siege into a similar format...I think Star Siege suffered from its format and style a bit when it first came out, and the Trolls have gotten so much better at layout, design and editing on their products ever since.
Next up, not exactly a "new" system to me, but one I have wandered away from due to the prodigious size of the last couple editions' core rulebooks. Champions Complete is an experiment from Hero Games, apparently, a return to the days when one book could give you the rules and material for an entire genre. I hope this experiment succeeds, and that we can look forward to stand-alone editions of Fantasy Hero Complete and Space Hero Complete in the future. I'm not that up to speed on the 6th edition of Hero System, either, so this will still have some new surprises for me, as well. I picked this one up in print, but it is also available in PDF here.
I bought In Flames and its two sourcebooks a while back in print form but am including them in this as I would really like to finish reading the game and maybe even run it. A strange universe of transhumanism with overtones of voodoo mythology as the premise for a sort of "higher space" from which loa-like transhuman entities are cast out to do penance in the mundane realms of normal human space? Powered by the D6 Engine? Sign me up!
Anyway, I plan to pick up a few more new RPGs in the coming weeks, and will make 2013 my "year of new RPG exploration." Who knows, maybe I'll finally get a chance to play a few, too!
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